RFK Assassination: New Revelations from the FBI’s ‘Kensalt’ Files

Mr. Ayton is the author of books and articles on the JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King Jr assassinations. The paperback edition of his latest book, The Forgotten Terrorist was published in May 2008.

As the American people look back 40 years to the tragic assassination of one of its most gifted leaders conspiracy advocates have once again attempted to prove a conspiracy was behind Robert Kennedy’s murder. Internet sites and blogs are awash with bogus revelations and the repetition of long abandoned myths which imply there is proof that RFK’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, had been aided in his crime.

In the years following the assassination various official investigative bodies concluded there was no credible evidence to link Sirhan with co-conspirators. Yet conspiracy advocates have been persistent in raising issues which cast doubt on those findings.

There were indeed many anomalous pieces of evidence in the case which included problems with the ballistics and forensics evidence and witness statements which raised the possibility that Sirhan had not been alone when he assassinated RFK. This is entirely normal and consistent with most murder investigations, particularly those major investigations where human error is inevitable because of the vast amounts of paperwork and physical evidence accrued. Additionally, forty years ago, police forces were not as careful in securing a murder scene as they are now.

Most of the so-called RFK assassination ‘mysteries’ were addressed by investigative journalist Dan Moldea, who successfully debunked many allegations by his thorough research and interviews with Los Angeles Police officers. (1)

Despite the work of Moldea and others conspiracists have continually resurrected four central areas of contention which they have used to cast doubt on the RFK assassination official investigations –

* The allegation that Sirhan Sirhan was never close enough to RFK to fire the fatal shot.

*The presence of a mysterious ‘polka dot girl’ and her accomplices who allegedly were the only people who fled the pantry after the shots were fired and were seen on a fire escape proclaiming they had shot RFK. Conspiracists claim the mystery woman ‘controlled’ a ‘hypnotically-programmed Sirhan.’

* Allegations that more than 8 shots had been fired in the pantry of the hotel proving a second gunman had been present.

*Witness statements that purportedly established the presence of a second gunman in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel. Conspiracists have alleged the second gunman was either security guard Thane Cesar or bookstore clerk Michael Wayne.

However, overlooked evidence in the FBI ‘Kensalt’ files reveals how conspiracists have constructed their conspiracy scenarios on false assumptions.

SIRHAN’S ‘POINT BLANK’ SHOT

One of the enduring myths of the RFK assassination, repeated ad nauseum by conspiracy writers and documentary makers alike, is the allegation that Sirhan was never less than 3 feet away from the Senator thus the assassin was unable to fire the point blank fatal shot to RFK’s head. The most recent allegations to this effect were made by Sirhan’s new attorney, William Pepper, conspiracy advocate Robert Joling and author David Talbot. Pepper said: “There is no account that pushes him any closer than 3 or 4 feet away from Bob Kennedy in front of him.” Joling stated: “…..Sirhan was never in a position where he could shoot Senator Kennedy from behind….” Talbot wrote in his recent book Brothers (2007): “But not one witness saw Sirhan shoot Kennedy in the back of his skull at point-blank range. According to witnesses, Sirhan attacked Kennedy from the front…..” (2)

Conspiracists are clearly in error as the ‘Kensalt’ files prove. (Kensalt was the codename for the FBI investigation.)

Many of the the 12 eyewitnesses who were close to RFK when he was shot stated that Sirhan was anywhere from 3 to 12 feet away from RFK. However, Dan Moldea established the majority of the 12 witnesses gave estimates of muzzle distance based only on the first shot and did not see Sirhan lunging at the Senator. Vincent DiPierro clearly saw this happen as he has often stated. "It would be impossible for there to be a second gun," Di Pierro told reporter Ron Kessler in 1974, “I saw the first shot. Kennedy fell at my feet. His blood splattered on me. I had a clear view of Kennedy and Sirhan." (3) DiPierro recently stated, “…Sirhan… was three feet away but the muzzle of the gun (in his outstretched arm) couldn’t be more than 3 to 5 inches away from his head.” According to DiPierro, Sirhan managed to stretch his arm around Karl Uecker who was escorting Kennedy through the pantry. Uecker was facing away from RFK when Sirhan reached around him to place the gun at RFK’s head. (4) This is supported by other witness statements, particularly those of Boris Yaro and Juan Romero who had been very close to RFK during the shooting. Boris Yaro stated RFK was shot at ‘point blank range.’ Romero, who had been shaking hands with RFK when the shots rang out initially said the gun was a ‘yard away’ but in a 2003 LA Times interview he said, “(Sirhan) put out his hand to the Senator’s head. . . . Then I see the guy put a bullet in the senator’s head.…” (5)

The statements of Yaro, Romero and DiPierro can now be supported by a previously overlooked statement in the ‘Kensalt’ files by the wife of writer George Plimpton. Freddy Plimpton “….saw an arm go up towards Senator Kennedy’s head, but did not see a gun, heard shots and it was obvious to her that Senator Kennedy had been shot….She saw Sirhan very clearly. She saw his arm up toward Senator Kennedy’s head ….” (6)

SIRHAN’S ALLEGED ACCOMPLICES

Conspiracy advocates have promoted the idea that Sirhan Sirhan had been a ‘hypnotised assassin’ and was controlled by a girl in a polka dot dress when he shot RFK.

Witness Sandra Serrano, who conspiracists often cite as proof of a plot to kill RFK, told police that a girl in a polka dot dress first entered the Embassy Room via a fire escape accompanied by two men. According to Serrano the girl fled with one of her accomplices down the same stairway about 20 minutes after they had arrived proclaiming ‘We shot Kennedy.’

Although there were inherent implausibilities in Serrano’s story from the beginning, including testimony by a Fire Department Inspector who said she was not on the fire escape at the time she stated, there is overlooked evidence in the FBI files which confirms Serrano may have been telling the truth after all – or at least a version of the truth. This newly discovered evidence buried in the FBI files has been ignored by assassination writers and researchers for nearly forty years and sheds new light on what Serrano actually saw and heard.

Serrano told investigators that the emergency fire stairs she had sat on were located on the south side of the Ambassador Ballroom. Large double doors opened on to the stairway from a hallway adjacent to the Ambassador Room. From this doorway the stairs went down to ground level and up to double fire doors leading into the Embassy Room which was located directly above the Ambassador Room.

According to the FBI files Geraldine Agnes McCarthy, a Kennedy supporter, had given a statement to FBI agents which described her activities at the time of the shooting. She had been with members of her family in the Ambassador Ballroom. The party consisted of Geraldine McCarthy, Margaret McCarthy, Winnie Marshall, Mary Towley, Eileen Anderson, Phil Litroh, Chris Marshall and Paul Benedict. They were waiting for the final election results and the victory speech by RFK. Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, she and several members of her family left the stage and went to a small alcove to the left of the stage and near the rear of the ballroom. This alcove had access to a stairway leading up to the Embassy Room and also had access to an outside door opening onto the Wilshire Street parking lot of the hotel. She stated that immediately outside this doorway to the parking lot there was a fire escape leading down from the floor above.

McCarthy and several members of her family were in this alcove attempting to get a breath of fresh air when several people came down the stairway from above and a girl in an orange dress stated “Kennedy has been shot.” Shortly after that a girl in a ‘beige dress with black dots’ came down the outside fire escape and exclaimed “Oh my God, Kennedy’s been shot.” Geraldine McCarthy told FBI agents that at no time did she hear anyone make the statement, “We've shot Kennedy.” She stated that several more people came down the stairway of the fire escape and she asked them questions attempting to verify what they had heard and it became apparent to her that RFK actually had been shot. McCarthy’s story was confirmed by a family member, Mrs. Winnie Theresa Marshall. (7)

Given this ‘new’ evidence it is clear that Serrano had been mistaken in hearing the girl in the polka dot dress shouting “We shot him.”

But even if Serrano heard correctly another explanation is possible without resorting to speculations about conspiracies. Serrano may also have been witness to an innocent cry of “We (i.e. the American People) shot Kennedy”; a natural response reflecting the intense concern Americans had at that time to the growing senseless violence that had become a societal phenomenon during the 1960s. In fact, a number of Embassy Room witnesses heard people in the crowd shout “We shot him.”

Albert Victor Ellis, a roommate of John Shamel, the hotel’s convention manager, “….heard a female voice state ‘We shot him.’ He assumed at the time this person meant we the people…..he left the Embassy Room….and went out into the lobby…where numerous people were milling around…he heard several other people…state something to the effect ‘We shot him’ and from the other conversations he was able to determine that they meant that the people were the cause of Senator Kennedy being shot….” (8)

Laurie Gail Porter, the daughter of California State Senatorial candidate Shelley Porter, was in the Embassy Room during RFK’s victory speech. After hearing the shots from about 50 feet away she heard her friend Robin Casden shout, ‘We shot him’. She “….did recall…there were several people who shouted ‘We shot him’ and she attributed the exclamation to the hysterical nature of the situation.” (9) In fact, Sandra Serrano offered this explanation to FBI agents when she was interviewed. According to an FBI memo, “Miss Serrano was asked if this woman could have said, ‘He shot him’ or ‘They shot him’ rather than ‘We shot him.’ Serrano insisted the word was ‘we’ but volunteered that she realized that ‘we’ could have meant we, meaning we as a group of Kennedy supporters or as we as society in general.” (10) This overlooked evidence in the case may also place in the correct context a report made by LAPD Sergeant Paul Sharaga that a couple he remembered as the ‘Bernsteins’ told him shortly after the shooting they had observed a young woman in a polka dot dress, accompanied by a young man, laughing and shouting ‘We shot him.’ (11)

It is clear from the FBI files that a second polka dot girl, besides Valerie Schulte, had indeed been present in the pantry at the time of the shooting.

Howard ‘Cap’ Hardy, for example, amongst others, saw a young woman in the pantry at the time of the shooting and she had been wearing a “…sleeveless dress, off-white in color, with navy blue circles on it. The blue circles were of different sizes and the smaller circles had a white peace symbol in them and the larger circles had the word ‘McCarthy’ in lower case white letters…she was not with anyone….” Howard said she later joined a group of Kennedy supporters in the Embassy Ballroom. (12)

Conspiracists, unable to give any real meaning to the sightings of a polka dot dress girl in the pantry and unable to positively state the girl was with Sirhan, have attempted to show her actions in the pantry after the shooting were suspicious. They have therefore given some importance to the statements made by witness George Green and Security Guard Jack Merritt to the effect that the polka dot girl and her accomplice/accomplices were the only people attempting to leave the pantry at the time of the shooting or immediately afterwards.

Conspiracy writers have clearly misunderstood the testimonies of these witnesses. FBI files also show that they have misinterpreted Merritt’s statement and of how Green was mistaken in his belief that the polka dot girl and her accomplices were the only people fleeing the pantry at the time of the shooting. Others who fled the pantry at the time of the shooting or shortly after the shots had been fired include Charles D. White, Boris Yaro, Thomas Perez, Evan Freed, Uno Timanson, Angelo DiPierro, Robin Karen Casden, Barbara Rubin, James W. Lowe, Gonzalo Cetina-Carrillo, Trudy Jennings, Freddy Plimpton and Marcus McBroom. Richard D. Little recalled, “…one of the Kennedy girls …came running out of the kitchen to the lobby of the Embassy Room shouting ‘They shot him.’ ” (13) Fred Meenedsen said he saw a “…man calling for a doctor (who) came running out. Next, an unknown woman…ran through these kitchen doors and said Kennedy had been shot as she went towards the lobby.” (14) Furthermore, it is clear the conspiracists have mischaracterized Merritt’s original statement. According to the FBI’s Kensalt files, “In the confusion [Merritt] noticed, among others, two men and a woman leave the kitchen through a back exit….she was wearing a polka dot dress….other people also left. ” (15)

From the FBI interviews with these pantry witnesses it is evident they had been fleeing the pantry for non-suspicious reasons including running to a phone, looking for police officers, evading gunfire or looking for doctors to attend to the pantry shooting victims. There were also plenty of deranged individuals around that night to give cause for concern about the behavior of some individuals at the time of the shooting. London Daily Express photographer Harry Benson said that after the shooting he “…went outside the ballroom where there was a white male….with a United States flag in his mouth….a real nutty guy who said something such as ‘Thank God, he’s been shot.’ ” And Henrietta Sterlitz and her friend Evelyn Planavsky saw “…two teenage boys and one teenage girl …pop ballons and… exclaim ‘Kennedy’s Dead!’ ” shortly before the assassination. (These individuals may have been the teenagers in Sharaga’s police report mentioned above.)(16)

Conspiracists believe the fact the ‘girl in the polka dot dress’ did not come forward after the mystery was publicized is supportive of a sinister interpretation of events. However, there is a more logical explanation. The national media were referring to the girl as a possible accomplice in RFK’s murder. And some newspaper reports were seriously considering the possibility RFK may have been assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. Given these conditions it is natural that the girl and her colleagues would not want to risk being charged as co-conspirators even though their actions that night were entirely innocent.

There is also an inherent illogicality to Serrano’s story which appears to be lost on conspiracy advocates – why would escaping plotters immediately proclaim to the world their involvement in the assassination? How could they be sure members of the public wouldn’t take them seriously and ask police officers to apprehend them before they could make good their escape?

ALLEGATIONS THAT MORE THAN 8 SHOTS HAD BEEN FIRED

The notion that more than 8 shots were fired in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel has gained credence amongst doubters since the airing of a Discovery Times television documentary in June 2007.

The documentary claimed that a second gunman aided Sirhan in the pantry of the hotel. An audio engineer hired by the Discovery Times Channel had claimed he had detected 13 shots on an audio tape made by a journalist at the time of the shooting. However, the Discovery Times Channel’s claims have proven to be flawed by acoustics experts. Additonally, the Discovery Channel’s allegation that two shots fired in quick succession had been too close to have been fired by one gunman was also built on erroneous assumptions. The audio engineers quickly discounted a ricochet because the end of the room was too far away to produce a ricochet sound as quickly as it is heard on the tape. However, they never considered the possibility the bullet could have ricocheted off any of the metal surfaces (pots, pans, tray stackers and a metal serving table) anywhere in the pantry, not just off the far wall.

Ear-witness testimony had never established a scenario in which 13 shots had been possible. FBI files show all the pantry witnesses, with the exception of only a few, never heard more than 8 shots and those few who guessed they heard further shots did not put the number beyond 10. The FBI files, furthermore, show that no one who had been in the pantry when Robert Kennedy was shot told the FBI or LAPD that anywhere near 13 shots had been fired. Only one witness gave this number, Nina Rhodes, but she never said this at the time she made her original statement in 1968. In 1968 she said she heard "eight distinct shots.” In 1992 Rhodes told conspiracy authors that she heard from 10-14 shots. (17)

According to the FBI files most of the estimated 77 witnesses in the pantry could not remember how many shots had been fired and described the gunshots in terms of ‘a number of shots,’ ‘a series of firecrackers,’ ‘several shots’ or ‘a number of shots in rapid succession.’ However, of those witnesses who ventured an opinion about how many shots had been fired all but a few put the number of shots at 8 or less, including: Harold Edward Hughes, Pete Hamill, Ralph Elmore, Jesse Unruh, Estelyn LaHive, Joseph A. LaHive, Richard Aubry, David Saul Barrett, Richard L. Cohen, David M. Esquith, Jacqueline Sullivan, James Cummings, Paul Green Houston, Richard Edward Drew, Bob Funk, Roosevelt Grier, Robert Anthony Toigo, Barbara Rubin, Freddy Plimpton, Lon Bruce Rubin, Dun Gifford, Charles Bailey, Jimmy Breslin, Stanley Kawalac, Robert Ray Breshears, Thomas Perez, Uno Timanson and Rafer Johnson.

THE ‘SECOND SHOOTER’

RFK conspiracy advocates believe a second gunman (whom conspiracists claim was security guard Thane Cesar) had been present in the pantry when RFK was shot. They build their case on statements by witnesses who claim they saw someone other than Sirhan carrying a weapon and who fled the pantry before he could be apprehended.

Conspiracists cite the statements of Marcus McBroom, Evan Freed, Don Schulman, Booker Griffin, Patricia Nelson and Dennis Weaver as indicative of a second gunman firing in the pantry. However, as the FBI files show these statements have been misinterpreted, taken out of context or simply lack credibility due to inherent implausabilities within them.

Conspiracy writers have used these statements to infer that Thane Cesar or Michael Wayne or both men had been assisting Sirhan in the pantry. Conspiracy writer James DiEugenio recently named Michael Wayne and Thane Cesar as Sirhan’s accomplices and said they both participated in the shooting. (18)

However, the FBI files reveal how conspiracy writers have manipulated the original statements of witnesses to claim there is evidence of a second gunman.

In 1986, nearly 20 years after the assassination, Marcus McBroom told a conspiracy writer that “…a man with a gun under his newspaper ran out in a very menacing way and myself and a man by the name of Sam Strain and the man running the ABC camera we drew back instinctively when we saw the gun.” (19)

Marcus McBroom’s original interview with FBI agents reveals no mention of a second gun.(20) And McBroom’s friend, Sam Strain, did not see a gun as his statement to the FBI demonstrates. Strain stated that the young man appeared to be carrying “…a package about two feet long and six inches wide which was wrapped in black paper of some type.”(21)

Dr Fred S. Parrott told FBI agents that while he was standing outside the door to the Embassy Room, a man came by carrying a rolled up newspaper under his arm followed by men shouting ‘Stop that man! Stop that man!’ He described the man with the newspaper as a white male, dark complexion, dark hair, 25 to 27 years old, 5'7" tall, medium build. (22)

This description fits that of Michael Wayne who, at the time of the assassination, was a 21 year old clerk at the Pickwick Bookstore in Hollywood and an avid collector of political memorabilia. After the shooting Wayne ran out of the pantry area and because someone shouted ‘Get him, he’s getting away’ security guard Augustus Mallard grabbed him then put him in handcuffs. Wayne told police he was only running for a telephone to tell friends to turn on their television sets. He was interviewed by the LAPD but was never considered a suspect.(23)

Other witnesses have been used by conspiracists to show a second gunman had been present in the pantry. However, it is clear from the FBI files that the person who these witnesses believed had carried a gun that night was actually Michael Wayne. Patricia Nelson and Dennis Weaver told FBI agents they believed they saw a man with a rolled up newspaper or poster and that the wooden stock of a rifle had been protruding from it. However, they later stated they were likely mistaken and identified the man as Michael Wayne. Nelson later identified Wayne from film footage of the hotel shown to her. “That’s him. That’s the same sweater, the same hair, the same sideburns”, she told agents. She also identified the package as the one she saw (24) Weaver agreed with Nelson. (25) Joseph Klein, who was with them at the time said, “That’s him right there, I’m positive.” (26)

It is clear from these interviews that the man McBroom, Parrott, Strain, Weaver, Nelson and Klein had observed was Michael Wayne despite the differing descriptions given to agents. Wayne had earlier in the evening been photographed by Bill Eppridge. Eppridge’s photo shows RFK autographing Wayne’s poster as the Senator walked to the Embassy Room to give his speech. It is clear from Eppridge’s photo that the poster in Wayne’s hand is too small to hold a pistol let alone a rifle. (27)

Other initial sightings of a second gunman were later found to be the result of misidentification or misunderstanding - or a change of heart many years after the assassination which suggested some witnesses had been heavily influenced by conspiracy buffs. Booker Griffin, for example, told a conspiracy writer in 1987 that he had observed a second gunman. However, in his 1968 interviews with the LAPD he only said the sounds of the shooting appeared to suggest more than one gun. (28)

Evan Freed and Don Schulman are cited by conspiracy writers as having observed a second gunman.

In a June 14, 1968 interview with FBI agents Freed said he saw a two men and a woman leave the pantry in a hurry after the shooting. And in 1992 Freed reportedly signed a document to the effect that more than one gunman was present in the pantry and that he had observed another man who looked like Sirhan. However, Freed had inadvertantly sent an uncorrected draft of what he described as ‘a letter’ to lawyer Marilyn Barrett. He amended it to read, “ At about the same time, I saw the ‘second man’ ….who I described as resembling Sirhan….it is possible he could have been holding a weapon, but I cannot be sure….I cannot say how many shots were fired by Sirhan Sirhan or whether any shots came from the ‘second man.’ ” (29)

Freed’s comments made in 1992 were entirely consistent with his statement to FBI agents on September 11 1968. (30) Furthermore, his 1992 comments about a ‘second man’ is entirely consistent with the preponderance of evidence presented above which suggests Freed’s ‘second man’ was actually Michael Wayne - a Sirhan look-alike.

To this day Freed continues to insist he never saw a second gunman in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel when RFK was assassinated. His most recent denial was in the DVD documentary RFK Must Die. Freed said, “[In the early 1990s] I was asked a number of times did I see a second shooter? Are you sure you didn’t? And I got the feeling that people were trying to convince me that I saw something that I didn’t really see. My recollection is I only saw one person shooting that night and that’s what I told the police when I was interviewed by the police. That’s what I told the FBI when I was interviewed by the FBI.” (31)

However, the conspiracists favorite ‘second gun’ witness is Don Schulman, a KNXT – TV news runner. Statements made by Schulman have been used for decades in an attempt to prove Thane Cesar had fired the fatal shot that killed RFK.

Immediately following the shooting Don Schulman was interviewed by Jeff Brent of Continental Broadcasting and said a security guard ‘had fired back.’ In 1971 Schulman said he did not see Sirhan shoot Kennedy, but he insisted that he saw the ‘security guard’ fire his gun. He also said he saw wounds erupting on Kennedy’s body but refused to make any connection to the two events.

However, Schulman later retracted his statement of having seen a second gunman citing his confusion during the chaotic moments of the shooting. In the mid-70s Schulman told the Kranz Investigation (which was set up by the Los Angeles authorities to look into allegations made by conspiracy theorists), that immediately following the shooting he was “tremendously confused” and that the words he used to describe the shooting to reporters in 1968 were the result of “confusion.” Schulman reported that he meant to tell reporters that “Kennedy had been hit three times, he had seen an arm fire, he had seen the security guards with guns, but he had never seen a security guard fire and hit Robert Kennedy.”(32)

Furthermore, new ballistics evidence has eliminated the possibility Cesar had fired his .38 pistol that night. (33) And the idea that Thane Cesar had carried his .22 pistol -- Sirhan used a .22 to kill Kennedy -- and used it to shoot RFK cannot be supported by either hard evidence or logic.

Thane Cesar carried a .38 pistol on the night of the assassination but he owned an H and R .22 pistol. However, accusing Cesar of having used his .22 pistol to kill RFK appears ridiculous at the outset – why would a murderer, under threat of execution if caught, hang on to the purported murder weapon for 3 months before he got rid of it? Cesar sold his H&R .22 pistol in September 1968.

For forty years conspiracy theorists have used human error to build their case for a non-existent conspiracy. Conspiracists believe Thane Cesar murdered RFK. Why? Simply because Cesar was standing behind RFK at the time of the shooting and pulled his gun after RFK fell to the floor. Don Schulman saw Cesar pull his gun and Schulman believed he fired it. Schulman later retracted his statement and confessed he had been mistaken. Sandra Serrano thought she heard a girl in a polka dot dress shout ‘We shot Kennedy’ but the preponderance of evidence suggests what she heard was entirely benign. Some witnesses believed people running away from the scene of the crime were co-conspirators but the police investigation proved that many of them were simply running to a telephone or seeking medical assistance or evading gunfire. Some witnesses believed the girl in the polka dot dress and her companions who were in the pantry during the shooting were the only ones to flee the scene of the crime, thus rendering their actions suspicious. But, as we have seen, others fled the pantry at the same time.

The new and overlooked evidence in this case highlights more than anything else the way conspiracists have tortured the evidential record in order to build smokescreens and spread doubt. To paraphrase historian Richard Hofstadter, the RFK conspiracy theorists’ procedure is to start with defensible assumptions using heated exaggeration to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed.

More Comments:

Helen Hammer -
2/28/2009

One of the first officers present on the scene personally told me Thane Cesar was carrying a .22 revolver, not a .38 as you report. This former LAPD officer also told me when Thane Cesar was asked to surrender his weapon, he claimed it had been stolen, NOT sold. If the weapon had been sold, efforts could have been made to trace the weapon and perform ballistics tests to compare it to the bullet retrieved from Robert Kennedy's body. No efforts were made, however, by the LAPD because, as I wrote above, Thane Cesar reported the gun had been STOLEN, not sold. Finally, because Cesar could have shot (and in fact DID shoot) RFK does NOT mean he did it intentionally. Sadly enough, in the pandemonium that ensued in the kitchen after Sirhan began shooting, the poorly trained Cesar emptied his weapon accidentally striking and killing RFK. The LAPD's negligent failure to have Cesar surrender his weapon that day was covered up to prevent the tarnishing of LAPD's reputation, and all officers involved in the case were at the time placed under a 2 year gag order by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. Because Thane Cesar killed RFK doesn't make it a conspiracy, it makes it a tragic accident.

Mel D Ayton -
6/24/2008

As usual ‘Willis’ (aka John Hunt - he hasn't denied it – see http://www.moldea.com/JHunt.html ) engages in a Pee Wee Herman form of debate - 'I know I am but what are you?'. It certainly tells us a lot about his juvenile state of mind.

As readers who follow these posts are aware, he has refused to prove he is who he says he is. He prefers, instead, to hide behind a cowardly cloak of anonymity.

HNN readers are fully aware that I never said LaHive was first interviewed by the FBI. This is what I wrote. It appears to have gone over Willis' head : "From an article about the lies and errors conspiracists spread about this case he is only able to point out one purported error – which isn’t an error at all – LaHive’s statement to the FBI is clear and truthful even if it does jar with her story given to the LAPD. But this is not at all unusual as witnesses often changed their stories over the period of time they were interviewed and re-interviewed. The point I was making in the article still stands – only a few witnesses guessed there were more than 8 shots out of the estimated 77 people in the pantry - THE OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE PROVIDED BY EARWITNESSES POINTS TO THE NUMBER OF SHOTS FIRED AS 8 OR LESS."

To most readers this is a clear statement of facts. To 'Willis' it is confusing but that's hardly surprising as he just cannot seem to understand the point I was making - ergo - only a FEW earwitnesses put the number of shots at more than 8.

‘Willis’ must have labored long and hard to nitpick his way through the statements I provided which establishes the 13 shot scenario was bogus. All he can come up with are the contradictions made by one of them. His inability to challenge any of the other statements is damning. It is a rather pathetic response which tells us he is grasping at straws.

‘Willis’ is clearly engaging in a form of debate which is typical of conspiracy mongerers – begin with one small premise then exaggerate it. Here’s another example of how a conspiracy buff can fool the general reader - http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/51418.html

Jay Edgar Whooover -
6/24/2008

British author Mel Ayton tells Discovery Times Channel that he believes the Bobby Kennedy murder case "should be reopened"!

Mr. Ayton calls for a new RFK investigation in the following YouTube video . . .

Tom Willis -
6/23/2008

Ayton is still building smokescreens and providing weak criticisms.

Ayton continues, as per his modus operandi, to lie. Obviously in his childlike fantasies, he sees himself as some kind of Houdini who, by sheer guile, manages to bluster and obfuscate his way out of the fixes and jams into which he places himself - leaving the gullible to marvel at, admire and ultimately worship his intellectual superiority.

Ah, but inevitably that blasted alarm clock must always sound to wake Ayton from his serenity. And quite often the trigger for its annoying buzz are his own words, back yet again to torment his tortured soul.

As you read earlier, Ayton first tried to invent for us a false belief that Estelyn Duffy LaHive had spoken to the FBI and then changed her story by the time she was interviewed by the LAPD.

Ayton's own words that he now denies:

"LaHive’s statement to the FBI is clear and truthful even if it does jar with her story given to the LAPD. But this is not at all unusual as witnesses often changed their stories over the period of time they were interviewed and re-interviewed."

Clearly Ayton hoped he could get HNN readers to believe that Duffy was initially honest with the FBI but then over a "period of time" changed her story (perhaps after she had learned more details about the case, one surmises?) and ultimately she was dishonest with the LAPD when they finally got around to interviewing her.

So Ayton would have had us believe about Este Duffy.

But Ayton's claim that Duffy first spoke honestly to the Bureau then after a period of time passed lied to the police is so easily disproven by the mere fact that her LAPD interview was conducted only four hours after the Kennedy shooting.

When Ayton is confronted with this annoying fact, what does our Houdini then do? Stunned from his slumber by that ever wearisome alarm clock, Ayton groggily stumbles his way through a hastily devised escape plan:

He simply denies having said what he previously said about Duffy, thus revealing yet again his contempt for HNN readers and his unflinching faith in their gullibility.

Go may go back to sleep now Mel.

Mel D Ayton -
6/23/2008

'Willis' is still building smokescreens and providing weak criticisms of my article. He is still concentrating on one witness and avoiding comment on the numerous lies espoused by conspiracy buffs which my article highlights.

'Willis' has also, as per his modus operandi, lied.He stated, "Ayton would have you believe..... Estelyn Duffy LaHive spoke to the FBI and then changed her story by the time she was interviewed by the LAPD." This is, of course, pure invention.
'Willis' may fool the gullible(the only types to read his website of choice) but I'm sure HNN readers will see through his ploy of bluster and obfuscation.

Readers may also recognize the 'Willis' style of writing here - http://www.moldea.com/JHunt.html - Hunt is an obnoxious and rude internet stalker who is an embarrassment even to his fellow conspiracy advocates.

Tom Willis -
6/23/2008

It must be quite obvious to HNN readers that Ayton clearly does not have any skills of self-awareness as he is unable to see how ridiculous his criticisms are.

Ayton clearly jumps from one fantasy to another to desperately back up his various positions. If by some miracle that wasn't clear before, it will be now.

Ayton would have you believe in the sheer fantasy, coming from nowhere than his own desperate mind, that Estelyn Duffy LaHive spoke to the FBI and then changed her story by the time she was interviewed by the LAPD.

Not possible.

On June 5, 1968, Este Duffy (which was her name at the time until she later married Joe LaHive) was interviewed by the LAPD, within only a few hours of the RFK shooting. The sun hadn't even come up yet in Los Angeles when she gave her account to police of hearing what seemed to her to have been ten shots, thus her experience was still fresh when she spoke to the LAPD.

That's not something Ayton wants you to know. He wants you to believe him rather than your own "lying eyes" (as they say) from reading for yourself Este's LAPD interview, which you can do right now very easily.

The following is a link to her actual LAPD interview (not a summary this time but a transcript of the actual interview itself). You will note the clock time given for her LAPD interview as 4:20 AM, local L.A. time, on June 5, 1968, just four hours after the Kennedy shooting.

Mel D Ayton -
6/23/2008

It must be quite obvious to HNN readers that Willis (if that is indeed his real name) clearly does not have any skills of self-awareness as he is unable to see how ridiculous his criticisms are. From an article about the lies and errors conspiracists spread about this case he is only able to point out one purported error – which isn’t an error at all – LaHive’s statement to the FBI is clear and truthful even if it does jar with her story given to the LAPD. But this is not at all unusual as witnesses often changed their stories over the period of time they were interviewed and re-interviewed. The point I was making in the article still stands – only a few witnesses guessed there were more than 8 shots out of the estimated 77 people in the pantry - THE OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE PROVIDED BY EARWITNESSES POINTS TO THE NUMBER OF SHOTS FIRED AS 8 OR LESS.

Willis does not comment on the most important issue raised by the article – which is the lies spread by him and other conspiracy buffs and repeated ad nauseum by conspiracy writers and documentary makers alike (especially on the conspiracy website mentioned by him)- (SEE: http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/51418.html ) It is the myth that Sirhan was never less than 3 feet away from the Senator thus unable to fire the point blank fatal shot to RFK’s head. That myth was decisively destroyed by Dan Moldea and myself but conspiracists simply bury their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge it because it gets in the way of their conspiracy-mongering.

Willis’ schoolboy tantrum does nothing except show HNN readers what a pretty unstable individual he is.

Tom Willis -
6/22/2008

And for anybody having trouble accessing the LAPD's Estelyn Duffy interview summary with that link I provided, this should help you (simply convert to the symbols that are mentioned below in caps):

Tom Willis -
6/22/2008

You state that Estelyn Duffey LaHive (widow of Joe LaHive) heard "two or three shots, then a slight pause, then several more shots."

But what you're deliberately leaving out is that Este LaHive (known as Este Duffey at the time) heard 7 or 8 shots after those initial 2 or 3 shots. You know full well Este told the LAPD that she heard a grand total of ten shots. But in typical Ayton fashion, you leave details like that out.

That's okay though, because HNN readers can themselves read an LAPD summary of her statement and compare it with the shameful way in which you have tried to deliberately mislead them about her remarks to police. Readers can access Estelyn Duffey LaHive's LAPD interview summary at the Mary Ferrell web site at http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=99763&amp;relPageId=319

Here is a portion of Este Duffey's comments to police as reported in the LAPD official summary:

DUFFEY, ESTELYN (MRS.)

Mrs. Duffey stated that she and Joe LaHive were standing in the hallway just outside the pantry doors. When Kennedy finished his speech he exited the rear of the platform and walked past her into the kitchen. She stated she heard what sounded like ten shots...

It's all there in official black and white from the LAPD documents, Ayton. You knew that all along, but you decided to report only part of what Duffey told the cops and not the full context of her statement concerning the shots. It should be clear from this that you deliberately took only a few selected comments from Duffey in order to deceive HNN readers.

This is not the first time you've played this kind of game, Ayton, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Obviously your credibility is non-existent. And obviously the same for Barber's and that of any others who foolishly allow themselves to get caught up in your schemes in order to do your bidding.

Mel D Ayton -
6/10/2008

In an email to the author dated 21st April 2008 Steve Barber wrote: "Van Praag's pulling 13 shots out of this recording is absurd, to say the least. I have studied this recording for 2 years. I received my copy of it in April 2006. I publicly presented my findings on the National Geographic Channel program, "CIA Secret Experiments", which aired March 10, 2008, and I pointed to a computer graph that shows 8 spikes, one for each gunshot. The gunshots are distinct, once you use Dolby C setting on a tape deck. I counted 8 distinct gunshots, fired rapidly, one after the other. I have the same, exact source of the recording that Van Praag uses, and, in fact, Van Praag and I corresponded in 2006, and he sent me a CD copy of what he calls his "master" which he said he was given permission to record “digitally” while at the California State Archives. The two sounds which Van Praag describes as coming too close together to be fired by one gunman are not two gunshots fired close together. The second of the two sounds I firmly believe to be the bullet striking a solid object. It does not have the characteristics of a 'pop' sound at all, and that is why it doesn't present a spike on the graph like the other gunshot sounds do. I am currently working directly with acoustics expert Phillip Harrison. Our findings differ drastically with what Van Praag claims to have found."

lois freeh -
6/6/2008

'Twisted Triangle' figure to speak today at center

HILLCREST: A former FBI agent will be in Hillcrest tonight to speak about her experiences in law enforcement as a gay woman and about the violence she endured at the hands of her FBI agent husband.

Margo Bennett, whose life is chronicled in the new book “Twisted Triangle,” will share her story at 7 p.m. at the San Diego Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center, 3909 Centre St.

The free event will include a signing with the author, Caitlin Rother, a former reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Bennett made headlines in 1996 when her husband, an undercover FBI agent, tried to kill her after learning about Bennett's lesbian affair with best-selling author Patricia Cornwell.

Bennett is now a police captain at the University of California Berkeley. –K.D.

Prosecutors said the Washington-based FBI equipment program manager approved a $2 million bid by the unidentified company to provide paper shredders. Company executives then invited Jones and his family on a Caribbean cruise during the 2003-2004 New Year's holiday. Prosecutors said the value of the cruise, lodgings and airfare was $7,500.

Jones is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 18 in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

lois freeh -
6/6/2008

Bremer & Wallace:
It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

"I have no evidence, but I think
my attempted assassination was part of a conspiracy."
— Governor George Wallace
By Lisa Pease

The story was both familiar and devastating. Another crazy gunman, portrayed as a withdrawn loner, had taken down another leading political figure in our country. On May 15, 1972, Arthur Herman Bremer pulled a gun and fired upon Governor George Corley Wallace during his campaign rally at a shopping center in Laurel, Maryland.

CBS photographer Laurens Pierce caught part of the shooting on film. A clip from this piece is included in the film Forrest Gump. Wallace is seen with his right side exposed as Bremer reaches forward through the crowd, plants the gun near Wallace’s stomach, and fires. Bremer continues firing four more shots, all in essentially the same forward direction, roughly parallel to the ground. Due largely to what was shown on the film, and to the apparent premeditation exhibited in his alleged diary, Bremer was arrested, tried and convicted.

To most people, this case was truly incontestable. This time, a deranged (though not legally insane) gunman had taken out a presidential hopeful. But as with the assassinations of the two Kennedy brothers and Dr. Martin Luther King, there appears to be more to the story.

Wallace alone was wounded in nine different places. Three other people were wounded by a bullet apiece. That makes twelve wounds. The gun found at the scene and presumed to be the only weapon used could only hold five bullets. Looks like someone brought magic bullets to Laurel that day.

Doctors who treated Wallace said he was hit by a minimum of four bullets, and possibly five. Yet three other victims were hit by bullets, and bullets were recovered from two of them. The New York Times reported that there was "broad speculation on how four persons had suffered at least seven separate wounds from a maximum of five shots," adding that although various law enforcement agencies had personnel on the scene, these agencies claimed that "none of their officers or agents had discharged their weapons."1 Curiously absent is the logical deduction: perhaps a second shooter was present.
nyt-wounds.jpg (54434 bytes)Bear in mind that shots 1 and 2 in the above picture represent two wounds each since they were through-and-through wounds, bringing Wallace’s total wound count to nine. In addition, three other people were wounded, bringing the total wound count to 12.

Note too the low placement of the upper chest wound (4). Watch where this wound appears in the other two bullet scenarios published at right.

shots-wp.jpg (47354 bytes)

(Picture from the Washington Post, 5/17/72)

Note that in the scenario described above, bullets would have had to enter Wallace from three directions: his right side, his front and from behind his left shoulder. How could one man, firing straight ahead, do that?

newsweek-wounds.jpg (26538 bytes)

(Picture from Newsweek, 5/29/72)

Note the odd trajectories posited by Newsweek. The bullet paths do not trace to a single firing position, and instead require the shooter to be both behind and somewhat above Wallace.

There were policemen on the roof of the shopping center, looking for snipers. Did they miss one? Did they include one?

And if the shoulder wound entered the chest first and then exited the shoulder, then there is the problem of the wound across the back of Wallace’s left shoulder blade. The CBS film of the shooting shows Bremer firing a gun, but does not show us how Wallace’s body was positioned following the initial shot. Wallace ultimately fell on his back. If he turned his back to the gun, allowing the bullet to graze his back left shoulder blade, how did a bullet enter his chest to exit his right shoulder?
Curious Bullet Trails

Two bullets were removed from Wallace. Wallace’s right arm was shot through in two places, leaving four wounds. Doctors speculated that the two bullets that caused these wounds continued on into Wallace’s chest and abdomen. The two bullets were recovered from the chest and abdomen wounds. But three wounds remained unaccounted for on Wallace at that point. The second chest wound was connected, perhaps by necessity, to the wound in the shoulder. In addition, Wallace took a grazing wound in the left shoulder blade.

One bullet was removed from Secret Service agent Nicholas Zarvos. He was shot in the right side of his throat; the bullet lodged in his left jaw. Another bullet was removed from the knee of campaign worker Dorothy Thompson. Curiously, the fact that a bullet was removed from Ms. Thompson was not made public until Bremer’s trial. Capt. Eldred C. Dothard of the Alabama State Patrol was wounded by a bullet grazing his abdomen. And one bullet was recovered from the pavement. If four bullets wounded Wallace, and two others had bullets in them, at least one of the bullets that wounded Wallace went on into one of the other victims. And if only one of them went into another victim, Dothard’s grazing bullet must have ended in Thompson’s knee or Zarvos’s throat. No single scenario seems to satisfy all wounds.

But the wounds are only the start of the curiousities in this case.
Ballistic Evidence (or Lack Thereof)

At Bremer’s trial, his court-appointed lawyer, Benjamin Lipsitz, got Robert Frazier of the FBI to admit to the following facts:

1. Bremer’s fingerprints were not found on the gun recovered at the scene.

2. The gun could not be matched to the victim bullets.

3. The bullets were too damaged to make such a comparison possible.2

In the CBS film, Bremer is clearly shown holding a gun without gloves. How is it that he failed to leave fingerprints? And matches between guns and bullets are routinely made. How is it that the bullets were so damaged in this case, and not damaged beyond identifiability in so many others? As for Frazier’s comment that the bullets were too damaged to be able to make comparisons, note that the day after the shooting, the Washington Post had reported that Zavros’ doctor stated that the bullet from Zavros’ jaw "was removed intact."

In addition, Frazier admitted that Bremer had been given paraffin casts, but tested negative for nitrates (found in gunpowder, among other substances), as had Lee Harvey Oswald in similar tests nine years earlier. However, a doctor who treated Bremer for his own wounds shortly after the shooting claimed he had washed Bremer’s hands with surgical soap, which would have removed all traces of gunpowder residue. It seems odd, however, that the authorities holding Bremer would allow evidence to be washed away.

The gun itself was not wrested from Bremer’s hand, but was found on the pavement by Secret Service agent Robert A. Innamorati. He picked it up from the pavement, and then "kept it secure until 9:00pm that evening,"3 at which point he turned it over to the FBI.

The gun was traced to Bremer because his car license was recorded in the files. But the owner of the shop did not remember Bremer. That may seem normal in most cases, but by nearly all other recorded accounts, Bremer was hard to miss. People described him as having a sickly, incessant smile, and a pasty white color that made him stick out from the crowd.

There were other guns at the plaza that day. The Washington Post reported that "At least two Prince George’s policemen were stationed on the shopping center rooftop, surveying for potential snipers, when Governor Wallace’s caravan arrived...."4 Many other policemen and Secret Service agents were in the crowd near Wallace during his appearance there.

Because of the numerous discrepancies and lack of hard physical evidence linking Bremer to the actual bullets that wounded the victims, at the opening of his trial, Bremer’s lawyer said, "I’m not trying to kid you. I don’t know whether he [Bremer] shot Wallace or not. I think some doctors will tell you even Arthur Bremer doesn’t know if shot Wallace." Lipsitz suggested instead that the bullets may have been fired by any of the dozens of policemen at the scene.

During the trial, Bremer was placed in the audience portion of the courtroom. Several witnesses could not identify him in the crowd as having been the gunman they claimed to have seen or tackled.
Second Suspect Rumors

The Maryland police originally issued a bulletin regarding a second suspect in the shooting. An all-points bulletin described the man as a white male, six feet three inches, 220 pounds, with silver gray hair, driving a 1971 light blue Cadillac.5 The bulletin was retracted soon after, however, and the police disavowed later that the bulletin had anything to do with the assassination attempt. Carl Bernstein, who along with Bob Woodward, wrote several of the pieces relating to the Wallace shooting, authored an article claiming to refute this and other rumors surrounding the case. According to Bernstein, a man had been seen changing his auto license tags from Georgia to Maryland plates. The car, a light blue Cadillac, was later found abandoned. The police reported that the incident was unconnected with the shooting.

There had been an earlier incident that bears noting. According to Dothard, two men with guns appeared at a Wallace rally nine days before the attempted assassination. One man apprehended was, without explanation, released. The other man escaped. Curiously, there is no record of the man’s arrest, or of anything about his companion.6
CBS and the Wallace Shooting

As mentioned earlier, CBS cameraman Laurens Pierce made a now famous film of the attempt on Wallace’s life. What’s odd is that this was the third time Pierce had caught Bremer on tape. Pierce had seen Bremer twice before shooting day—once at an earlier rally in Wheaton, Maryland, and once sometime before that. According to the New York Times (5/17/72),

Mr. Pierce, who has been traveling with the Governor since April 30, said in an interview that he was convinced he had seen the suspect before he encountered him Monday in Wheaton, because "the previous time I saw him he was fanatic almost in appearance, so I did a close-up shot."

Pierce dould not remember where this earlier occurance took place. At Wheaton, however, Pierce related that he went up to Bremer and told him he had filmed him at a previous ralley. Pierce claimed, "he shied away from me, as if to say, ‘No, no!’"7

Catching a would-be assassin on film before the shooting happened most recently in the Rabin assassination case. The alleged assassin was filmed for several minutes by himself, before the assassination took place.

What is especially odd is that, while Pierce picked Bremer out of the crowd, filmed him and talked to him, the Secret Service did not, despite his having crossed places with them before. During a Nixon appearance in Canada, Bremer stayed at a hotel that housed about three dozen Secret Service agents. In his diary, Bremer talks about watching them with his binoculars, and being caught by one of them on camera. In addition, according to William Gullett, the chief executive of Prince George’s County, Maryland, Bremer had been arrested previously in Milwaukee and charged with carrying a concealed weapon. The charge was later reduced to disorderly conduct. Milwaukee police, however, were unable to find any record of his arrest. In Kalamazoo, Michigan, at a previous Wallace appearance, a parking lot attendant had called the police because he saw Bremer sitting in a car, outside the place Wallace was later to appear, for the better part of the day. The police questioned Bremer, but when Bremer told them he simply wanted to get a good seat, they believed him and left him alone. Bremer had also walked away from his life a few months earlier, disappearing from two jobs without any word. Wallace campaign workers noticed Wallace and mentioned that he seemed strange. Lastly, Bremer’s family was listed as a problem family with social service agencies in Wisconsin. Despite all of the above, the Secret Service data bank had no record of Wallace.
Bremer’s Expenditures

Bremer spent at least two months traveling between Milwaukee, Canada, New York and Maryland before the Laurel incident. Yet Bremer never had any significant source of income. His last two jobs before he disappeared from Milwaukee mid-February of 1972 were as a busboy and a janitor. As the New York Times put it,

How did the former bus boy and janitor, who earned $3,016 last year, according to a Federal income tax form found in his apartment, support himself and manage to buy guns, tape recorder, portable radio with police band, binoculars and other equipment he was carrying, as well as finance his travels?8

Curiously, the New York Times appeared to have inflated the income figure. Both the Washington Post and Time magazine had previously reported that the Federal income tax form found in Bremer’s apartment showed a much lower figure: $1,611. The lower figure is likely the accurate one, given that Bremer made only $9.45 a day. And even then, he would have had to put in for overtime to reach that figure. Bremer could not have had that full sum available, as he had to pay rent and eat during that year. Assuming he spent money on little else, there is still an enormous problem here. Bremer was able to purchase a car for $795 in cash, fly to and from New York City, stay at the exclusive Waldorf Astoria hotel, drive to and from Ottawa, Canada, where he stayed at another exclusive hotel, the Lord Elgin (where the Secret Service were staying during Nixon’s visit), buy three guns, all of which cost upwards of $80, take a helicopter ride in NYC, obtain a ride in a chauffered limousine, tip a girl at a massage parlor $30, and so forth. As with the cases of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray, this "loner" clearly had financial support from an outside source.

One person may have provided a key to this part of the puzzle. Earl S. Nunnery, trainmaster for the Chesapeak & Ohio Railway’s rail-auto ferry service through the Great Lakes region, told the Associated Press and confirmed to the New York Times that Bremer had taken his automobile from Milwaukee to Ludington, Michigan in April and again in May. But more importantly, Nunnery recalled the Bremer was not alone. He described Bremer’s companion as a well-dressed man, about 6' 2" tall, weighing 225 pounds, with curled hair that appeared heavily sprayed, that hung down over his ears. The companion appeared to have a New York accent. Nunnery said the man talked excitedly about moving some political campaign from Wisconsin to Michigan. Nunnery was so curious about which political candidate these two were discussing that he ventured a look at the car, hoping a bumper sticker might provide an answer. In the car of Bremer’s companion, he saw a third person with long hair, who could have been male or female.9 Interestingly, at the Wallace rally in Kalamazoo, Bremer had been seen talking to a slim, attractive woman accompanied by some "hippie types" who were distributing anti-Wallace literature.10

Despite this evidence, the FBI, police and media were busily painting Bremer as a loner, without accomplices.

Curiously, Bremer was not simply following Wallace. His Ottawa trip coincided with Nixon’s appearance there, and his diary is full of references to his wanting to kill Nixon. His stay at the Waldorf-Astoria in NYC corresponded to a night candidate Hubert Humphrey had planned to stay there. But Humphrey cancelled, and Wallace went back to Milwaukee, only to leave the next day on the auto-rail ferry for Michigan.
The FBI’s Strange Behavior

In a move reminiscent of the treatment of witnesses to the Kennedy assassination, the FBI busily instructed witnesses not to talk to the press.11 The FBI took possession of hotel records and instructed Waldorf-Astoria hotel employees not to divulge how much Bremer paid to stay there.12 They told Representative Henry Reuss and his aides not to divulge Bremer’s responses to a questionnaire he had responded to and returned to them.13
E. Howard Hunt and Bremer?

The belated desire for secrecy does not jibe with other actions taken by the Bureau. For example, right after the shooting, FBI people entered Bremer’s apartment in Milwaukee. But then, the FBI left for an hour and a half. Upon their return, they sealed off the apartment to all visitors. But why was the apartment left open for press and other visitors in the interim? Anyone could have walked off with, or more interestingly, planted incriminating evidence there. In fact, Gore Vidal, in the New York Review of Books, wrote a long essay in which he postulated that Watergate figure, expert forger and longtime Kennedy assassination suspect Everett Howard Hunt had penned Bremer’s infamous diary. He cited literary allusions and devices combined with misspellings that looked so phony as to have been made deliberately as reasons to disbelieve that Bremer was the original author. Hunt had claimed that Charles Colson had asked him to fly to Milwaukee after the assassination attempt to see what Bremer’s political leanings were.14 Colson maintained, however, that no such conversation took place, and claimed he had instead asked the FBI to look closely into the matter and to keep him posted on what they found. Colson argued that it would make no sense for him to ask the FBI to investigate, and then to send Hunt into the waiting arms of the FBI at Bremer’s apartment. Given Hunt’s proclivity to tell untruths, and given the plausibility of Colson’s position, it seems likely Hunt’s story emerged to cover his own interest in the case. In his autobiography, Hunt claims he went so far as to call airlines in an attempt to book a flight to Milwaukee that night. Hunt wrote,

Reluctantly, I began to pack a bag, adding to it the shaving kit that held my CIA-issue physical disguise and documents....I called several airlines and found that the only available flight would put me in Milwaukee about 11 o’clock that night.15

In the end, however, Hunt claims he decided not to go when he realized the place would be crawling with FBI by the time he got there. Was Hunt afraid that a flight he had booked, and perhaps taken, would be discovered, hence the cover story? In the end, we do not know whether Hunt flew there or not, and whether or not Colson or Hunt suggested the trip in the first place. But there is a curious footnote to this. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post received an anonymous tip that one of the Watergate suspects had gone to meet with Bremer in Milwaukee.16 While no evidence emerged to support that tip, it remains an intriguing item. Even Howard Simons, the Post’s managing editor, made the following comment to Woodward, Bernstein and other editors he had summoned. "There’s one thing we’ve got to think about," he said, regarding the Wallace shooting. "The ultimate dirty trick."17
Dirty Tricks in ’72

The suggestion of something more sinister in the shooting of Governor Wallace needs to be placed against the backdrop of all that was happening in 1972. Donald Segretti pulled off many dirty tricks on the Democrats during this year. For example, at a Muskie fundraiser, liquor, flowers, pizza and entertainers suddenly appeared, unrequested, cash on delivery. A reprint of an article dealing unfavorably with Edward Kennedy’s role in the Chappaquidick incident was distributed to members of Congress on facsimiles of Muskie’s stationery. Interestingly, the FBI found numerous phone calls from E. Howard Hunt to Segretti, implying that Hunt was perhaps directing Segretti’s efforts.

1972 was truly a low point in American democracy. This was the year of the "Canuck Letter," a letter supposedly written by an aide to presidential hopeful Edmund Muskie, in which the aide claimed Muskie condoned the use of the perjorative term "Canuck" regarding the many French-Americans living in New Hampshire. This letter was published by right-winger William Loeb before the New Hampshire primary. The following day, the same publication displayed a scathing personal attack on Muskie’s wife. On the next day, when Muskie abandoned his prepared speech and uncharacteristically took off after Loeb for these pieces, Muskie inexplicably lost his famous composure and broke down into tears. According to Bob Woodward, his famous source "Deep Throat" told him the Canuck Letter came right out of the White House. According to another source, Ken Clawson, the man who originally provided Bremer’s identity to the Post’s editors when no one was talking, admitted to having written the Canuck letter. Clawson was then employed by the White House. But even more intriguing is what Miles Copeland, longtime CIA heavyweight, had to say about Muskie’s subsequent breakdown and Hunt’s possible role therein:

On one occasion, Jojo’s [a pseudonym for a high-level CIA officer] office was asked for an LSD-type drug that could be slipped into the lemonade of Democratic orators, thus causing them to say sillier things than they would say anyhow. To this day, some of my friends at the Agency are convinced that Howard Hunt or Gordon Liddy or somebody got hold of a variety of that drug and slipped it into Senator Muskie’s lemonade before he played that famous weeping scene.18

Dirty tricks were used against George McGovern’s campaign as well. In All the President’s Men, Woodward claimed his source Deep Throat told him the following:

[Hunt’s] operation was not only to check leaks to the papers but often to manufacture items for the press. It was a Colson-Hunt operation. Recipients include all you guys—Jack Andersen, Evans & Novak, the Post, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune. The business of [McGovern’s choice for Vice President, Senator Thomas] Eagleton’s drunk-driving record or his health records, I understand, involves the White House and Hunt somehow. 19

On a more sinister note, Lou Russell was on James McCord’s payroll while employed to provide security for McGovern’s campaign headquarters. McCord paid Russell through Bud Fensterwald’s Committee to Investigate Assassinations (CIA).20 Another plant inside the McGovern campaign, Tom Gregory, was being run by Howard Hunt.21

1972 is most famous, however, for the Watergate break-in, which ultimately led to Nixon’s self-removal from office. The CIA played a heavy and interesting role in both the break-in and the subsequent revelations that led to Nixon’s removal. As Probe has written about in past issues, it appears the CIA operatives deliberately got themselves caught in the Watergate hotel so as not to blow other operations. Then, when Helms was removed, removing Nixon was seen as payback. Those who most contributed to exposing Nixon’s activities, such as Alexander Butterfield, James McCord, and Howard Hunt, all had relationships with the CIA. If the cumulative weight of the evidence is to be believed, it appears that the CIA ran the country’s election process in 1972, deciding which candidates would survive or fail, and participating in acts of sabotage.

Is it too far fetched to suggest they may have had an interest in controlling the political fortunes of others that year, even by such drastic means as assassination? From what we know of their presence in the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, such as suggestion can hardly be called far-fetched. Therefore, we must ask that most ugly of questions: is there evidence of CIA involvement in the Wallace shooting?

According to newspaperwoman Sybil Leek and lawyer-turned-investigative-reporter Bert Sugar, the answer is yes.
Sinister Connections

According to Leek and Sugar, while Bremer was at the Lord Elgin hotel in Ottawa, he met with a Dennis Cossini. Famed conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell and Alan Stang identified Cossini as a CIA operative. Cossini was found dead from a massive heroin overdose in July, 1972, just two months after the Wallace shooting. Cossini had no history of drug use.

Cossini’s address book contained the phone number of a John J. McCleary. McCleary lived in Sacramento, California, and was employed by V & T International, an import-export firm. McCleary drowned in the Pacific ocean in the fall of 1972. His father, amazingly, drowned around the same time in Reno, Nevada.22

If the CIA was somehow involved, that could explain both E. Howard Hunt’s immediate interest in the case, as well as the role of CBS in filming Bremer in the act of shooting. CBS and the CIA shared a particularly close relationship. CIA involvement might go far in explaining the following connections as well.

Bremer’s brother, William Bremer, was arrested shortly after the Wallace shooting for having bilked over 2,000 Miami matrons out of over $80,000 by signing them up for non-existant weight-loss sessions. Curiously, Bremer’s lawyer was none other than Ellis Rubin, the man who had defended many anti-Castro activists and who defended the CIA men who participated in the Watergate break-in.23

Even more curious is Bremer’s half-sister Gail’s relationship with the Reverend Jerry Owen (ne Oliver Brindley Owen), who figures prominently in the RFK case. Owen’s bible-thumping show was cancelled from KCOP in Los Angeles when evidence surfaced showing he had a possibly sinister relationship with Sirhan Sirhan just prior to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. After the assassination, Owen had gone to the police with a strange tale of having picked Sirhan up as a hitchhiker. But other witnesses claimed Owen had given Sirhan cash, and had more of a relationship with Sirhan that he had admitted. Los Angeles County Supervisor Baxter Ward wrote a letter to his colleagues detailing an interesting experience he had with Owen:

In the summer of 1971 as a broadcaster, I attempted unsuccessfully to contact Owen for an interview. In the spring of 1972, while I was campaigning for political office, Jerry Owen left word at my campaign headquarters that he would like to see me the following day. The call was placed just hours after Governor Wallace had been shot. Owen did not keep the appointment the following day.

A short time after the hearing I conducted last May [1975] into the Senator Kennedy ballistics evidence, Jerry Owen called again, saying he would like to see me to disclose the full story behind the conspiracy.

He came the following day, and I obtained his permission to tape record his conversation. In my opinion, he provided no information beyond what he had stated in 1968 to the authorities and to the press. However, there was one addition: when I questioned him as to why he did not keep our appointment the day after Governor Wallace had been shot, Owen volunteered that he was personal friends with the sister of Arthur Bremmer [sic]....Owen stated that Gale Bremmer [sic - his half sister was Gail Aiken] was employed by his brother here in Los Angeles for several years and had then just left Los Angeles for Florida because she was continually harassed by the FBI.24

Links to the RFK case, which appears to be awash in CIA involvement, do not end here. In fact, Bremer had checked out two books on Sirhan from the Milwaukee Public Library in 1972 and had made comments about them in his journal. But perhaps the most interesting connection yet is the one discovered by Betsy Langman. Langman flew from her New York home to Los Angeles to talk to Dr. William Bryan, suspected hypnotist of Sirhan in the RFK assassination saga. On the pretext of doing an article on hypnosis, she encouraged the egotistical Bryan to elaborate at length on his ventures with "Boston Strangler" Albert Di Salvo, "Hollywood Strangler" Henry Bush, and about hypnosis in general. But when she brought up the subject of Sirhan, Bryan became suddenly curt and short-winded, charging out of the office declaring "This interview is over!"

A sympathetic secretary of Bryan’s joined Langman for coffee across the street, and dropped an interesting item. As Bill Turner and Jonn Christian recounted it in their book on the RFK case,

According to the secretary, Bryan had received an emergency call from Laurel, Marlyand, only minutes after George Wallace was shot. The call somehow concerned the shooting.25

Could Bremer have been hypnotized to shoot Wallace?
The Specter of Hypnosis

Bremer’s behavior both before and after the shooting was strange, to say the least. The media shared only tantalizing clues:

According to one Federal officer, who asked not to be identified, Mr. Bremer "seemed incredibly indifferent to what was going on around him, even the things that affected him. He was blasé, almost oblivious to what was going on. He seems like a shallow, mixed-up man, but not an ideologue."26

Some witnesses commented, as others had about Sirhan, of Bremer’s "spine-tingling" smirk,27 or "silly grin."28 In November of the previous year, Bremer had been questioned by the police while parked alone in a no-parking zone in Fox Point, a wealthy Milwaukee suburb. On the seat, he had several boxes of bullets. When the policeman asked why he had a gun, Bremer turned it over. According to a Newsweek account, the policeman later testified that Bremer was "completely incoherent" although the terms "drunk" or "drugged" are nowhere to be found.29 This was the incident referred to earlier, where Bremer was originally arrested for having a concealed weapon, but later released after paying the fine for the lesser charge of "disorderly conduct."

Finally, there is the report from Leek and Sugar that Bremer had a friend named Michael Cullen who was a hypnotist and a master of behavior modification and psychological programming. In light of the evidence, the hypothesis of mental manipulations cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Aftermath

The question of conspiracy goes hand in hand with the old one of Cui Bono? Who benefits? 1972 was a year in which the Vietnam war was dividing the country. On the one hand, George McGovern was pulling votes from the more moderate Hubert Humphrey in large part because he was willing to speak out against the carnage there. McGovern could never have won in a direct fight with Nixon, as history proved. But with Wallace splitting the conservative vote, McGovern had a chance of becoming president. Clearly, those who supported the Vietnam engagement gained when Wallace was taken out of the running by the bullets in Laurel, Maryland.

Wallace lived to be 79. Bremer is still alive and incarcerated. He is not yet 50. According to Patricia Cushwa, chairman of the Maryland Parole Commission, "There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what he [Bremer] does." Not surprising, considered the defense and prosecution pyschiatrists had portrayed Bremer as a schizophrenic. What was surprising was how the jury could find this man, who could not even answer whether he had shot Wallace or not, legally sane. His original crime, it seems, was being born defenseless into a family that was unable to care for him. He grew up in a dysfunctional environment. He was given neither love nor guidance growing up. Either he grew into a criminal, or was twisted into one by forces as yet unknown. What does Bremer think now, after all this time? "Everyone is mean nowadays....[We’ve] got teenagers running around with drugs and machine guns, they never heard of me....They never heard of the public figure in my case, and they could care less. I was in prison when they were born. The country kind of went to hell in the last 24 years."30 Make that 36.

24. Memorandum from Baxter Ward to fellow supervisors, 7/29/75, published in the Appendix of The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: The Conspiracy and Coverup, by William Turner and Jonn Christian.(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1978 & 1993, originally published by Random House, 1978), p. 374.

25. Turner and Christian, p. 227.

26. New York Times, 5/17/72.

27. Newsweek, 5/29/72.

28. New York Times, 8/2/72.

29. Newsweek, 5/29/72.

30. AP Online, 9/20/98.

Mel D Ayton -
6/3/2008

Clearly, standards of journalism have fallen. Had this reporter really researched this issue he would have discovered that the 13 shot scenario is seriously flawed:

(06-02) 20:11 PDT -- The assassination was all over in a few seconds. In the photograph of that moment, Bobby Kennedy, his eyes open and glazed, lies on his back on a hotel pantry floor, his head cradled by a busboy dressed starkly in white - a tableau that seems almost angelic were it not so brutal.

Less than 26 hours after being shot early on June 5, 1968, right after winning the California presidential primary, Kennedy was dead. He was 42.

Three major assassinations rocked America in the 1960s. Two of the assassins - Lee Harvey Oswald, the killer of John F. Kennedy, and James Earl Ray, who shot Martin Luther King Jr. - are dead. But Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of killing Robert F. Kennedy 40 years ago this week in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, is living out his days in the California state prison at Corcoran. He is 64 and has never fully explained what happened that night other than to say he can't remember it.

Sirhan was a seemingly unremarkable man. He was a Palestinian who was raised in the Middle East until he was 12, when his family settled in Southern California. Before the Kennedy assassination, he held a series of menial jobs and at one point worked at the Santa Anita racetrack and had hoped to be a jockey.

After Los Angeles police found his diary, in which he had written, "RFK must die," investigators concluded that he was angry about Kennedy's support for Israel and somehow had tied the assassination date - he wrote that Kennedy must be killed "before 5 June 68" - to the one-year anniversary of the Six-Day War.
Open and shut

Los Angeles police, who declined today to comment on their investigation, deemed the assassination an open-and-shut case - Sirhan did it by himself. Independent investigators who have looked at the case over the years, however, suggest otherwise.

"The interesting thing is how under-examined the Robert Kennedy assassination is, compared to President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.," said David Talbot of San Francisco, author of "Brothers," a book that looks into Robert Kennedy's own investigation into his brother's death and his conviction that JFK was the victim of a conspiracy.

"Bobby remains the unknown territory," Talbot said. "But even if you look at it minimally, there are questions that come to mind."

Among them:

-- Sirhan fired his .22-caliber revolver from a few feet in front of Kennedy, according to police, yet Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi reported that the fatal shot was fired less than one inch from Kennedy's head, behind his right ear. Of the four shots fired at Kennedy, all came from the rear. None of this was raised at Sirhan's trial because his defense was based on the theory that he suffered from "diminished capacity" rather than on any challenge of prosecutors' evidence.

-- Sirhan's revolver held eight rounds; a radio reporter's tape recording of the shooting has sounds of what one audio expert describes as 13 shots. Sirhan never had a chance to reload before bystanders tackled him. Two of the sounds on the tape are what forensic experts call "double shots," which means two shots so close together that they couldn't have come from the same revolver.

-- Several witnesses saw a security guard just behind Kennedy draw his revolver, and one reported seeing him fire it.

-- Over the years, Sirhan has told investigators who interviewed him in prison that he was in an hypnotic trance during the shooting and can't remember it at all. He said he could not remember writing, "RFK must die." He did not respond to an interview request for this story.
Night of celebration

On the night Kennedy was killed, the hotel ballroom was filled with supporters celebrating his victory in the California primary and looking to the Democratic convention in Chicago. The last thing Kennedy said from the ballroom podium, just after midnight, was, "My thanks to all of you, and now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there."

In the pantry, as Kennedy moved through the crowd, he was surrounded by friends, including Paul Schrade of the United Auto Workers, labor chairman for Kennedy's campaign.

"All of a sudden, I got hit in the head by a bullet," Schrade said. "I shook violently. I thought I was being electrocuted. When I came to, I was on the floor."

Schrade was one of five people besides Kennedy who were hit by bullets. For the past 33 years, he has been investigating the shooting.
Mystery bullet hole

Unlike the JFK assassination, which created an outdoor crime scene in Dallas sprawling from the grassy knoll to the Texas School Book Depository, the shooting of Robert Kennedy happened in a confined space. Stray bullets ended up buried in walls and the ceiling, where they could be tracked down.

In photos, police investigators can be seen circling what they later said was a bullet hole in a ceiling panel, behind where Sirhan fired. For Sirhan to have shot into that panel, he would have had to "either turn around or the bullet would have to have made a U-turn," said Philip Van Praag, a retired electrical engineer and audio expert who co-authored a book about the case.

Then there was the mystery of the woman in the polka dot dress. According to witness Sandra Serrano, the woman fled from the hotel kitchen with an unidentified man, shouting, "We shot him, we shot him." When a bystander asked who got shot, the woman said, "We shot Kennedy." Other witnesses reported seeing the woman, though it is not clear whether they heard the comment.

In a new film about the assassination, "RFK Must Die," Irish documentary maker Shane O'Sullivan asked Serrano about what happened later. She said Los Angeles police spent hours trying to convince her she was wrong in what she saw, and she finally gave in. Forty years later, however, she told O'Sullivan that her original version was correct.
'I don't remember anything'

In fact, the iconic polka dot dress is also something fixed in the mind of Sirhan himself.

William Turner, a retired FBI agent who wrote a book about the case, says he interviewed Sirhan in prison in 1975.

"He told me, 'I don't remember anything after the woman in the polka dot dress asked me for coffee, and heavy on the cream and sugar,' " said Turner, who lives in San Rafael. "He said he had amnesia from that time until he was overpowered in the pantry after the shots were fired. He said, 'I must have done it, but I don't remember.' "

Turner thinks Sirhan was "hypno-programmed to shoot" and that he was a real-life Manchurian Candidate - the fictional brainwashed dupe whose controllers want to assassinate a presidential candidate. Turner suspects the same villains as do the JFK conspiracy theorists - "organized crime and, predominantly, people from the CIA."

Van Praag and a fellow investigator, former American Academy of Forensic Scientists president Robert Joling, don't subscribe to any one conspiracy theory, but they are convinced more than one gunman was involved. The two have written a book about the killing, whose title, "An Open and Shut Case," is a dig at the police investigation.

Van Praag, a former senior instructor in commercial audio-video systems for Ampex Corp., analyzed a tape recording of the killing made by a Polish radio reporter. He said he heard 13 shots over five seconds and was able to isolate the sounds well enough to say that two different weapons were firing during those five seconds.
Guard passed polygraph

One of those weapons, according to the documentary, "Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination," which ran on the Discovery Times Channel a year ago, could have been held by Thane Eugene Cesar, the security guard who was near Kennedy.

Dan Moldea, who wrote a book, "The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy: An Investigation of Motive, Means and Opportunity," said he thought for years that "Cesar had done it." But in 1987 he persuaded Cesar to undergo a polygraph examination that the former guard "passed with flying colors," Moldea said.

"He's being accused of murder all over the place," Moldea said, adding that he is now Cesar's protector and would be willing to "bring him forward" if authorities ever reopen the case.

In fact, reopening the case is not a far-fetched idea.

Joling thinks an "independent panel of forensic scientists" should be created to "reinvestigate this matter on all the evidence." The case "should be resolved in a truthful, factual and honest presentation," he said.

"Let the chips fall where they may. That way, at least, the American people will know that somebody without a stake in the outcome made this finding."

lois freeh -
5/31/2008

The Pinkertons were guarding President Lincoln when he was shot.
After the Homestead Massacres of 1880's
Congress attempted to restrain the Death Squad activities of the Pinkertons.
By 1920 the FBI had inherited and consolidated the files of the Pinkertons
into its own database.

Mel D Ayton -
5/31/2008

Mr Rowe,
Thank you for your kind words. It is refreshing to read comments like yours which are welcomed by those who wish to debate this issue with some civility and without personal animosity.
With regard to your response to Mr Bohnings comments - he was referring to lurid (and unproven)conspiracy theories aimed at some members of Lincoln's government.Other writers have claimed Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were privy to Booth's plans.
Mel Ayton

Rob Rowe -
5/30/2008

I don't remember putting all those commas in my comments. That's got to annoy a professional writer. Sorry.

Rob Rowe -
5/30/2008

Mel,

Excellent article. I mean that sincerely.

Though, as you know, I am not particularly fond of what I see as your considerably biased approach, there is certainly much praise to be given you regarding the quality of your writing and documentation. I always enjoy your work, and I encourage others to read it.

I don't mind admitting that you may be the best writer to have tackled the topic of the RFK assassination. So you can imagine how it irks me to see you focusing so much on pushing a conclusion, especially one, which I don’t find myself, swayed toward.

However, I do see the value in a writer of such talent bringing attention to the details of the RFK assassination. I even agree with you on many points, and am somewhat relieved to see someone making them. Your writing helps bring quite a bit more balance to the whole "debate" that is in desperate need of thoughtful examination.

Rob Rowe

Rob Rowe -
5/30/2008

Mr. Bohning,

Your comment is very funny. It's fairly common knowledge that the assassination of President Lincoln was part of a larger conspiracy. In fact, it's public record. The official investigation exposed it as such, and a number of co-conspirators were brought to trial and convicted. Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt were sentenced to death by hanging and Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlen were sentenced to life in prison.

Sadly, your comments are typical of the mentality and level of knowledge common to most who share your opinions regarding these issues.

lois freeh -
5/30/2008

Has anyone connected the dots to current and or former FBI agents and or FBI informants who were there at the crime scene of the Bobby Kennedy-John Kennedy-Martin Luther king assassinations?
Memphis police Chief-ex-FBI agent

A haunting moment that won't go away

By Tony Sauro
Record Staff Writer
May 30, 2008 6:00 AM

It seems shocking and absurd even now.

Less than five years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated while riding in an open convertible - and two months after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as he stood fully exposed on a motel balcony - the security surrounding Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 was appallingly lax.

"There was no security," said Bill Eppridge, who was a 30-year-old Life magazine photographer covering Kennedy's ill-fated presidential primary campaign. "Secret Service protection only was mandated by LBJ (President Lyndon Baines Johnson) after Bobby was killed."

Kennedy, then a senator from New York, died June 6, 1968, after being shot by an assassin at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel following his narrow victory in the June 4 California primary election.

Eppridge, shocked at first and then reacting solely on instinct, took the dramatic photos of a mortally wounded Kennedy, prostrate on the floor with a busboy cradling his head.

Eppridge's new book, "A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties," includes that chilling image from 40 years ago as well as photographs of Kennedy riding in open convertibles so loaded with people (as many as nine or 10) that the rear ends nearly are touching the crowd.

There is almost no security in sight.

In other compelling images, Kennedy is standing totally unprotected, surrounded by seas of upstretched hands.

On that tragic night, it was Kennedy's decision to leave the room where he had given his victory speech by the same route he'd used to enter the hotel.

Bill Barry, a former FBI agent who was Kennedy's only bodyguard with professional security training and experience, had planned to use a different exit, which was the usual procedure.

Instead of being in front of Kennedy, as was normal, Eppridge suddenly was behind him.

What happened next - total and uncontrollable mayhem, confusion, terror and outrage - still haunts Eppridge.

"I think about that a lot," he said during a telephone conversation from his home in New Milford, Conn. "The whole scene kind of lives inside of my head. It comes up every once in awhile.

"Suddenly, I'll hear the shots. I can still hear them. Eight of them. The whole 21 minutes just goes through my head. Bad dreams go away. But nightmares? Uh-uh. They stay."

Eppridge also had a haunting premonition.

"We had a feeling beforehand that things were going really, really well," he recalled. "Sometimes when things are going really, really good, you get the feeling that something's gonna go wrong."

He retains ambivalent feelings about his haunting photograph, which he captured reflexively after one of the assassin's bullets narrowly missed him.

The full contact sheet of his exposures from that night - they're still disturbing to look at - is included in his new book.

"I could never hang that (picture) on my wall," said Eppridge, who spent the months following Kennedy's shocking death photographing wild horses in Wyoming and Montana and never covered another political campaign. "I tried once, but I just couldn't. I can look at it, but it's difficult."

Incredibly, Life magazine's original large, framed print of the image survived a fire that destroyed Eppridge's home when he was living in Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon in the 1970s.

Dolores Huerta, a United Farm Workers of America co-founder and organizer who grew up in Stockton, was there that fateful night, too.

"I was standing right next to him (Kennedy) as he gave his (victory) speech," said Huerta. "It's just something nobody expected. He actually was supposed to go to the ballroom, where we had the mariachis waiting for him.

"We were very jubilant. Very jubilant. It's just tragic that he was taken away from us."

The pain still lingers for Eppridge, now 70.

"Christ, I loved the guy," he said. "I had been trained that you don't do that. You didn't get involved with the candidate.

"You couldn't help it with Bobby. You just couldn't help but like him. He was an honest man. He did what he said and he meant what he said. There was nothing two-faced about him. If he felt something, he told you."

lois freeh -
5/30/2008

FBI agent accused of affair faces fraud charge

By GREG RISLING –
May 29, 2008

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An FBI agent from Phoenix was indicted in Los Angeles on 18 charges that accuse him of having an affair with the wife of a man he was investigating.

Joe Gordwin, 39, was arrested Thursday at the FBI office in Phoenix and was placed on administrative leave. He was expected to make his initial court appearance later Thursday.

The indictment returned Wednesday said that, over a three-year period, Gordwin hid his relationship from his superiors and other law enforcement agencies so he wouldn't lose his job.

Gordwin was charged with six counts of wire fraud, five counts of making false statements and seven counts of witness tampering. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 285 years in prison.

"My client feels he is absolutely innocent," his attorney, Craig Mehrens, said outside of a court hearing in Phoenix.

U.S. Magistrate Lawrence Anderson ordered Gordwin released on his own recognizance and forbid him from contacting witnesses.

Gordwin, who has worked at the FBI for 10 years, began the illicit relationship in 2002 after he arrested the woman's husband during a gang investigation, the indictment said.

Gordwin was accused of brokering a favorable prison sentence for the husband with the Maricopa County district attorney's office in early 2003.

The husband was arrested again in early 2005 in connection with an armed robbery of a Radio Shack. The woman's son also was taken into custody.

Authorities alleged that Gordwin attempted to conceal his ongoing relationship with the man's wife by seeking to identify a confidential informant as the source of information — when in fact the details were coming from his mistress.

Gordwin attempted to help his lover's son by using the informant to help find a fugitive, whose arrest the son could take credit for, according to the indictment.

The fugitive was later arrested and Gordwin reached out to a prosecutor to discuss a plea deal for the son, who eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation, according to court documents.

The indictment said that in October 2005, after Gordwin was rebuffed by prosecutors on a beneficial plea deal for the woman's husband, the FBI agent worried the relationship would be exposed.

Gordwin then allegedly made partial admissions about the affair to his boss.

Despite being told not to see the woman anymore, Gordwin met with her twice, on both occasions asking her to lie to investigators, the indictment said.

The case is being handled by the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles after federal prosecutors in Phoenix were recused.

lois freeh -
5/29/2008

William Pepper - An Act of State The Execution of MLK
William Pepper -An Act of State The Execution of MLK
138 min -

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CHAPTER EIGHT

UNCIVIL WRONGS AND CIVIL RIGHTS
Excerpt

On November 12, 1992, during the waning days of the Bush Administration, the federal prosecutor in the northern district of Alabama sent a brief, churlish letter to a lawyer working for Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington. The federal investigation of Arrington, U.S. Attorney Jack Selden announced, was over. "Based on a thorough evaluation of the evidence," he wrote, "the Public Integrity Section and the Tax Division of the Department of Justice determined, with my concurrence, that prosecution should be declined."

Considering the full circumstances, the response of Birmingham's first black mayor to Selden's letter was extraordinarily restrained. "As I have stated repeatedly throughout this protracted investigation, I have never engaged in any crime or wrongdoing," Arrington said in a brief announcement.

Thus ended, an amazing on-again-off-again string of federal investigations of Arrington that had begun two decades before with the racist paranoia of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and then been resurrected by the Republican political operatives who seized control of the federal government in Alabama with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan.

The full story of the Justice Department's unwarranted pursuit of Mayor Arrington -- a former biology professor and main stream political figure -- is by itself a repellant tale of unjustified official harassment. But, when considered along with the government's flawed attacks on a half dozen civil rights activists in Birmingham and other parts of Alabama, the combined events suggest something even more ugly: a systematic and partly successful effort by conservative white Alabamians to harness the enforcement muscle of the Justice Department for the purpose of subduing the black Democratic politicians who challenged their domination of the state.

So far, no single memorandum describing this log-lived effort, has been located. Quite likely, none was written. Of course the federal officials who were responsible for the Arrington investigations and the other, even more noisome, acts insist that partisan, racial and class calculations had nothing to do with their ugly guerrilla war. And many thoughtful Americans, imbued with a sense of idealism about how their Justice Department sometimes has worked to protect the basic rights of individual Americans, shrink from considering the disturbing ease with which the Justice Department over the years has pursued other goals.

"During a good part of my working life, many of my friends and I have regarded the Civil Rights Division as the crown jewel of the Justice Department," said Mark Lynch, a highly regarded Washington lawyer who for many years was on the staff of the American Civil Liberties Union.

At one level, Lynch's point is well taken. Few Americans doubt that the Justice Department's enforcement effort under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- leading to the enfranchisement of black voters across the south -- was a major, essential, and even glorious event in American history. Similarly, a strong majority of the American people agree on the critical importance, both in real and symbolic terms, of the Department's complex campaign against segregated public services and facilities.

As Lynch acknowledges, however, when the Justice Department's short-term and long-term civil rights record is carefully scrutinized, an optimistic reading of the Civil Rights Division must, at a minimum, be carefully qualified. One essential distinction to keep in mind is that the Civil Rights Division is only one part of the Justice Department and the two institutions have very different records. The department's performance in Alabama -- encompassing the activities of senior officials in Washington, the state's three federal prosecutors, and the FBI --is just one recent and particularly powerful reason why considerable skepticism is required when it comes to judging the Department's overall civil rights record.

Because the discrete parts of what might be called the Alabama conspiracy were many, and were mostly cloaked in secrecy, the overall pattern of the scheme was not immediately obvious. The true picture began to emerge a few years ago, however, when the government, in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act by Mayor Arrington, provided him 292 pages of his 518-page FBI file.

Among the most interesting parts were a set of 16 heavily-censored pages concerning a secret FBI investigation of Arrington that had been started more than 20 years ago, on January 26, 1972. The FBI said an additional 40 pages of this particular section of his file were being withheld. The bureau justified both the censorship and the withholding on a number of legal grounds, including the need to protect the identity of confidential sources.[1]

Arrington was the brilliant son of sharecroppers who had gone on to earn his doctorate in biology and become a college professor. At the time the FBI's original investigation began, he was the director of the Alabama Center for Higher Education, a consortium of Alabama's black colleges, and had just been elected to the

Birmingham City Council. In those day, of course, Birmingham was special: probably the south's most segregated city, the place where Public Safety Director Eugene "Bull" Connor would shock the world by unleashing snarling police dogs and violent streams of water on peaceful, young and mostly black demonstrators.

Although most of the notations on the 16 pages have been blacked out, it appears that with Arrington's election, the FBI concluded that the new councilman in this relatively small southern city had been magically transformed into a national leader of a dangerous "black-extremist organization." The reward for the FBI's mystifying decision to elevate him to this exclusive brotherhood was that Arrington became the target of the FBI's formal and highly secret program to "track, expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and their groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder."[2]

As noted in a later chapter on the Justice Department and its handling of national security problems, every federal court that considered the merits of the FBI's various COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program) projects has concluded that they were unlawful. The statutory responsibility of the FBI, after all, is to investigate specific criminal acts, not to disrupt, misdirect, discredit and neutralize individuals who are criticizing various aspects of life in the United States.

According to the decisions of several appellate courts, the COINTELPRO projects aimed at black activists had another repugnant feature. "The blatant racial overtone of the FBI program, coupled with the plaintiffs' various organizational efforts, make clear the entanglement of race and politics that characterized the implementation of the COINTELPRO conspiracy," said one such critical decision.[3]

This general condemnation is reinforced by the specifics of the Arrington case. At precisely the same time that the FBI made Arrington a COINTELPRO target, the newly elected councilman had become a vocal critic of the brutal way the Birmingham Police Department was then treating many Afro-American citizens. He also was directly involved in a strenuous and intensely resented effort to persuade the city to improve its employment and promotion policies for black Americans.

The highly censored documents the FBI provided Arrington do not disclose whether the bureau initiated the kinds of actions against him that it routinely employed against other COINTELPRO targets. The documents do not show, for example, whether the FBI sent out slanderous unsigned letters designed to disrupt Arrington's budding political career or break up his marriage or destroy his credit rating. Nor do they show if FBI agents provided unscrupulous reporters with incorrect or misleading information designed to undermine his reputation. At the very minimum, however, all persons rated as "key black activists" were subjected to intense surveillance which resulted in the writing of FBI reports that were then shared with the Secret Service, military intelligence units and the appropriate federal prosecutor.

On August 8, 1972, for example, the FBI dispatched such a report about Arrington to the United States attorney in Birmingham. In the copy of the report provided Arrington, all the substantive details have been obscured. The censors, however, kindly left untouched a mystifying official claim that any disclosure of the information contained in the original report on City Councilman Arrington "could be prejudicial to the defense interests of the United States."

Even before Arrington had become an official COINTELPRO target, however, the whole project had begun to unravel. One key event in its eventual demise was the March 1971 burglary of an FBI office in Media, Pa., during which a number of embarrassing COINTELPRO documents were stolen by a group of political activists and subsequently leaked to reporters. Then, in May 1972, came the death of J. Edgar Hoover, the program's principal architect. Though manipulative FBI actions to foil political activism did not completely disappear from the FBI's bag of tricks after Hoover's death, the post-Watergate leaders of the Justice Department established new and far more restrictive guidelines to control them. One development outside the control of justice Department which surely contributed to the end of COINTELPRO was the growing strength of Afro-American voters. With their increasing voice in the elective politics of America, the demonstrations and sit-ins that had so upset the authoritarian mindset of Hoover and the governors, mayors, and police chiefs of the South began to decline.

THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION

Arrington's days as an FBI target, however, were far from over. The former college professor was thrust back under the FBI-Justice Department microscope by three separate political events that had no apparent connection with any criminal or national security concerns of the government. First, in November 1979, Arrington was elected the mayor of Birmingham. Second, exactly one years later, a right-wing Vietnam War hero named Jeremiah Denton was elected to the United States Senate. Third, in the same election, Denton's fellow Republican, Ronald Reagan, captured the White House.

Within months of their election, Senator Denton selected and President Reagan approved three new United States attorneys for Alabama. Frank Donaldson became the federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Alabama (Birmingham), John C. Bell the prosecutor in the Middle District (Montgomery), and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III in the Southern District (Mobile).

For awhile, it appears, there was a lull in the Justice Department's interest in Arrington. But then, with increasing ferocity, the United States Attorney for Alabama's northern district and the FBI agents in the Birmingham area once again focused their official gaze on city's mayor. The official records obtained by Arrington show the FBI initiated the first of its new wave of investigations in 1984. The FBI undertook a second and third investigation in 1985 and 1986, three in 1987, one in 1988, three more in 1989 and a final probe in 1990.

Given the amazing number of FBI investigations of Mayor Arrington between 1984 and 1990, the campaign obviously was not a casual, unplanned series of unrelated events. And given the government's complete failure to charge him with a single crime --and the final 1992 clearance letter -- it's also impossible to believe that the campaign was anything but a political vendetta.

Bill Briem -
5/29/2008

Jun 06, 4:00 pm

(60 minutes)
Conspiracy Test
The RFK Assassination
TV-PG, CC

For the first time on TV, hear the only known recording of the shots fired during the assassination of presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy. Will the 'Conspiracy Test' of this previously unknown tape prove that Sirhan Sirhan did not act alone?

lois freeh -
5/28/2008

Like the assassins of President kennedy are going to let Robert Kennedy
to harness the forces of the Presidency to bring them to justice.
Robert Kennedy knew who these people were.
The Kennedy clan had done their own private investigation of President Kennedy's assassination which later became published in the book FAREWELL AMERICA.
Who really killed JFK? Farewell America by James Hepburn

An excerpt from the book Farewell America by James Hepburn which examines the issue of who really killed John F. Kennedy.

About the book: Who really killed John F. Kennedy? This heavily researched report, prepared by the British Secret Service and published under the pseudonym "James Hepburn," is one of the few books which is not allowed to pass through the U.S. Customs. Much of this book is devoted to background, telling us who liked Kennedy, who disliked him, and who detested him. One whole chapter is devoted to excerpts from Kennedy's speeches during his last year as President. There is a long chapter on the history of the oil industry, with specific emphasis placed on Texas and Louisiana oilmen whose independent status made them more vulnerable to Kennedy's economic policies than the well-rooted wealth of the Rockefellers and other Northern oil powers. The authors estimate that the assassination and its cover-up cost between $5-10 million and that this money was raised by at least 100 people contributing from $10,000 to $50,000 each.

From the book: The attack was to be carried out by a team of 10 men, including 4 gunmen, each seconded by an assistant who would be responsible for their protection, evacuation, and radio liaison, and who would retrieve the shells. The 9th man would serve as a central radio operator, and the 10th was to create a last-minute diversion to enable the gunmen to get into position....

A few minutes before the arrival of the motorcade, a man wearing green army fatigues had a sudden fit of epilepsy in Elm Street. The attack lasted less than a minute and was over as suddenly as it had begun, but it drew the attention of the people standing around him. The police took the "epileptic" away....

In 30 years on the job, J. Edgar Hoover has developed an intelligence system which nothing-no racket, and certainly no conspiracy--can escape. Through its extensive network of informers, the FBI knows everything worth knowing that goes on in the U.S., even in areas that lie outside its legal jurisdiction. (After the assassination, the FBI submitted 25,000 investigative reports. It went so far as to describe the dreams of some of the witnesses.) The Dallas conspiracy was born and took root in places where the FBI was well represented. Its informers included former FBI agent James Rowley, chief of the Secret Service, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, CIA agent Guy Bannister, also a member of the Minutemen, and Lee Harvey Oswald. H. L. Hunt used former FBI agents as bodyguards, and Dallas police chief Curry was in contact with several FBI men and was under surveillance by the FBI, which had no fewer than 75 agents in Dallas.

By mid-October, Hoover had been informed of the existence of a plot and was familiar with many of the details. The FBI often launches an investigation on the strength of a rumor, and the information it received that fall from Boston, Chicago, and Dallas was based on far more than hearsay. These reports were checked out and verified. The week before the President's departure for Texas, Hoover knew exactly what was going to happen. Why did the FBI fail to intervene?

It is true that the FBI bore no responsibility for the security of the President. It is also true that every year dozens of investigations are made of threats against the life of the President. Moreover, the FBI is an investigative agency, not a national police force. Nevertheless, a section of the FBI Manual issued to each agent stipulates that:

"Any information indicating the possibility of an attempt against the person or safety of the President, members of the immediate family of the President, the President-Elect or the Vice-President must be referred immediately by the most expeditious means of communication to the nearest office of the U.S. Secret Service." ...

The regulations, however, were ignored.

Hoover, "the man who is almost a legend" (in the words of Rep. Gerald Ford) would probably not have agreed to cooperate with the Committee, but he did absolutely nothing to stop it. He may not have approved of the assassination, but he didn't disapprove of it either. Hoover preferred to stay out of other people's fights, especially when they involved business circles over which he exercised little control. Faced with a choice between his professional duty and his abhorrence of everything that President Kennedy represented, he chose the latter alternative. He also hoped that the affair would tarnish the reputation of the CIA and shatter his Attorney General.

After the assassination, the FBI pulled out its files and submitted its report. It laid the blame and designated the culprits. Texas got back at Hoover by declaring, on January 24, 1964, that Lee Oswald had been on the FBI payroll as an informer since 1962. Neither the FBI nor the CIA were ever called upon to clear themselves. The assassination was bigger than both of them.

lois freeh -
5/28/2008

A new study of eyewitness reports published in assassinationresearch.com has revealed a major discrepancy between the actual sequence of events these witnesses observed and the sequence presented in home movies of the assassination known as the Zapruder film and the Nix film. The witnesses reported that a motorcycle patrolman rode forward to the lead car to advise the Chief of Police that the President had been shot. Neither film shows it.

Madison, WI (PRWEB) February 10, 2008 -- The editor of Assassination Research, James H. Fetzer, Ph.D., has announced the discovery of new proof that the home movies of the assassination of JFK known as the Zapruder film and a second known as the Nix film are fakes. (The Nix film was taken from the opposite side looking toward "the grassy knoll.") Both were subject to extensive alteration to fabricate evidence of the crime and keep the truth about the sequence of events in Dealey Plaza from the American people. Fetzer, McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, observed that the films are authentic only if the visible events they record correspond to the actual sequence of events at the time. "This proof is based upon the convergent testimony of motorcycle patrolmen, members of the Secret Service, and the Dallas Chief of Police," said Fetzer. "That it contradicts the official account of the assassination recorded in the films qualifies as a major breakthrough."

The evidence emerged as an unexpected outcome of the collation of eyewitness reports in Dealey Plaza conducted by John P. Costella, Ph.D., who co-edits assassinationresearch.com with Fetzer. Costella earned his Ph.D. in physics with a specialty in electromagnetism, including the physics of light and of moving objects. What he discovered were multiple, consistent and reinforcing reports that James Chaney, a motorcycle patrolman who was to the right rear of the presidential limousine, rode forward to tell Jesse Curry, Dallas Chief of Police--who was in the lead car with the head of the Secret Service in Dallas, Agent Forrest Sorrels, and a second Secret Service Agent, Winston Lawson--that the President had been shot. This led Chief Curry to issue instructions for the limousine to be escorted to Parkland Hospital, where the President would be pronounced dead 30 minutes later. Bobby Hargis, a motorcycle patrolman riding on the left rear, confirmed Chaney's report. But this sequence is in neither the Zapruder film nor the Nix film.

The Zapruder film was a necessary part of the plot so the conspirators could control the official story
Part of the power of Costella's new findings is that they can be appraised by anyone with access to the film, which is archived at assassinationscience.com, and his collation of reports at Assassination Research 5/1 (2007), assassinationresearch/v5n1/v5n1costella.pdf . As illustrations of what he has uncovered, here are some of the reports from the officials who were involved:

* James Chaney (motorcycle patrolman on right rear of the Presidential limousine): "I went ahead of the President's car to inform Chief Curry that the President had been hit. And then he instructed us over the air to take him to Parkland Hospital and that Parkland was standing by."

* Bobby Hargis (motorcycle patrolman on left rear of the Presidential limousine): "The motorcycle officer on the right side of the car was Jim Chaney. He immediately went forward and announced to the Chief that the President had been shot."

* Winston Lawson (Secret Service Agent in the lead car in front of the Presidential limousine): "A motorcycle escort officer pulled along side our Lead Car and said the President had been shot. Chief Curry gave a signal over the radio for police to converge on the area of the incident."

* Forrest Sorrels (Secret Service Agent in the lead car in front of the Presidential limousine): "A motorcycle patrolman pulled up alongside of the car and Chief Curry yelled, 'Is anybody hurt?', to which the officer responded in the affirmative."

* Chief Jesse Curry (in the lead car in front of the Presidential limousine): "...about this time a motorcycle officer, I believe it was Officer Chaney, rode up beside us and I asked if something happened back there and he said, 'Yes,' and I said 'Has somebody been shot?" And he said, 'I think so.'"

There are multiple sources for their testimony, which is corroborated by that of others, including, for example, Marrion Baker, a Dallas Police Officer, who immediately thereafter entered the Book Depository and confronted Lee Oswald in the 2nd floor lunchroom. Costella's study provides additional citations.

This stunning new proof of the fabrication of the two most important films of the assassination focuses attention on the agency in immediate control of the most important evidence in the assassination, which was the Secret Service. Indeed, there are more than 15 indications of Secret Service complicity in setting up JFK for the hit, including leaving two Secret Service agents at Love Field; ordering the vehicles in the wrong sequence, with the President's first instead of in the middle of the motorcade; not welding manhole covers; not covering the open windows; allowing the crowd to spill out into the street; ordering the 112th Military Intelligence unit to "stand down"; directing the accompanying motorcycle officers to not ride forward beyond the rear wheels; taking an improper motorcade route; not responding when shots began to be fired; pulling the limo to the left and to a halt to insure he would be killed; using a bucket of water and sponge to clean blood and brains from the back seat at Parkland Hospital; and sending the limo back to Ford Motor Company to be dismantled and rebuilt.

These are not the only indications of Secret Service complicity, Fetzer said. In the wake of the enormous resurgence of interest in the assassination following the release of Oliver Stone's "JFK", Congress passed a JFK Records Act creating a five-member civilian board entrusted with the responsibility of declassifying documents and records held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and other government organizations, where the panel's decisions could only be overridden by the President himself, who was then Bill Clinton. Although Clinton never intervened to stop the release of evidence, when the Secret Service learned that the panel wanted copies of Presidential Protection Records for other motorcades involving President Kennedy, instead of releasing them it destroyed them. "I can't imagine a more telling indication of consciousness of guilt," said Fetzer, who has edited three books and chaired or co-chaired four conferences on the death of JFK.

Another fascinating source of information has come from Rich DellaRosa, who today moderates a research site at JFKresearch.com. He reports having seen what appears to be the original film on three occasions. He observed the limo driver steer to the left. The stop was so sudden that it jostled the occupants. This observation is confirmed by close study of the Zapruder film itself, where frames show passengers being thrown forward immediately after the head shot at Frame 313. This indicates that the sequence of events has been reversed. There were actually two head shots before the vehicle resumed its forward movement. DellaRosa's report can be found as Appendix E of The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003), which includes a color photo section that reveals the massive blow-out to the President's head, which is visible in Frame 374. The wound corresponds closely to diagrams from physicians and studies of the alteration of the cranial X-rays by David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., in Assassination Science (1998). These fabrications were used to discount witness reports (at least 40, including at Parkland and at Bethsda) of such a blowout.

That Greer pulled the limo to the left and stopped was such powerful proof of Secret Service complicity that it had to be taken out. Jack White, a legendary photo-analyst, has detected dozens and dozens of anomalies in the photos and films from the assassination and has been the most consistent critic of the presumption of authenticity of the film in the history of its study. "The Zapruder film was a necessary part of the plot so the conspirators could control the official story," White observed. "The motorcade stopping and anything associated with that sequence had to be removed. The lead car pulled to the curb, along with the other cars, and Chaney rode forward to advise Curry. Any actual film of the motorcade at that moment would show chaos--conflicting with the needs of the official story. It had to be massively edited to keep control."

"The official account presented in The Warren Report (1964) and in Gerald Posner's Case Closed (1992)," Fetzer said, "is predicated upon the 'magic bullet' theory and the authenticity of the films and photographs." The "magic bullet" theory, however, is not only provably false but not even anatomically possible as assassinationscience.com/ReasoningAboutAssassinations.pdf, explains. "I have been stunned by the lengths to which some have gone in their attempts to defend the Zapruder film from criticism. Josiah Thompson, author of Six Seconds in Dallas (1967), an analysis based on the film, recently appeared in 'Oswald's Ghost,' an obvious work of disinformation, and asserted, "The Zapruder film is the basic evidence in this case'! That is not only an abuse of language--since, as David Lifton, author of Best Evidence (1980), has emphasized, the body is the best evidence--but we have conclusive evidence that the film has been faked."

Fetzer also expressed disillusionment with Noam Chomsky, who has dismissed the very idea that JFK was taken out by a conspiracy. "Major policy issues were involved here, including withdrawing our advisors from Vietnam, reforming or abolishing the Fed, cracking down on organized crime, and cutting the oil depletion allowance. LBJ wanted to be 'President of all the people' and his chance was slipping through his fingers. Even Nixon was quoted in the Dallas paper that morning speculating that he would not be on the ticket in 1964. Discoveries like these indicate high-level complicity by elements of various agencies, including the Secret Service and the FBI. I hope that skeptics like Chomsky and zealots like Thompson finally come to their senses. Not only is the Zapruder film a fake but other films and photographs, such as the Nix and Muchmore, have been altered to conform to it."

lois freeh -
5/28/2008

An FBI agent involved in the high-profile investigation of the Crazy Horse Too strip club was charged with drunken driving last month after crashing his truck.

Robert Clymer, 40, was cited with one count of misdemeanor driving while intoxicated following the early morning crash on Jan. 29, Las Vegas police said.

An FBI spokesman had no comment on the arrest or Clymer's employment status.

Someone called police about 4:30 a.m. that Saturday after Clymer's 2004 Chevrolet Silverado truck partially jumped a curb at the entrance of a gated community near Buffalo Drive and Gowan Road, a police report said.

By the time police and firefighters got to the scene, the truck was smoking and catching fire. Firefighters forced open the driver's side door and pulled out an unconscious Clymer, police said.

Once the fire was out, officers found an empty 25-ounce bottle of Captain Morgan's rum on the passenger seat and a Sig Sauer 9 mm pistol in the cab, the report said.

The cab smelled strongly of alcohol, police said.

Paramedics took Clymer to University Medical Center, where he was admitted for treatment for smoke inhalation and a nurse took a blood sample for testing.

The gun found in the truck was missing its magazine, but police soon connected it to an incident earlier that night.

Security guards at the Suncoast had called police about 3:20 a.m. to report a man in the parking lot with a gun. The man drove off before police could arrive, but the man left behind the 15-round magazine from his gun, police said.

Officers matched the magazine to the gun found in Clymer's truck.

Las Vegas police also had an encounter with Clymer earlier in the night when an officer pulled him over for a traffic violation, police said.

Clymer showed no signs of intoxication at the time, and the officer released him with a warning, police said.

The agents's first court appearance on the drunken-driving charge is scheduled for next month.

Clymer was one of the lead agents in the decade-long investigation of Crazy Horse Too. The first arrests in the investigation came last month, when agents arrested club manager Bobby D'Apice and two others.

In June 2003, the club's lawyer asked a federal judge to hold Clymer and fellow agent Robert Bennett in contempt of court, saying they wrongly seized documents during a raid of the club and had disobeyed the judge's order to return them.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Peggy Leen denied that claim in October 2003.

Ellen Liebeler -
5/28/2008

Well I must say this is all very fascinating to me.

And I see now that the Investigation Discovery Channel will be re-airing "Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination" next week.

In case anyone is interested, they plan to show it again at 4:00 pm on Friday, June 6, 2008. I thought it was a marvelous program.

lois freeh -
5/27/2008

high school dropout can't find work so he joins the Marines to Semper Fi
and collect some money.
High school dropout is sent to Paris Island to be all he can be. He is trained to kill women and children and a occasional freedom fighter trying to protect his wife from being raped by Mr Semper Fi.
High school dropout ships out to invade Iraq for USEmpire and US oil companies.
American oil companies are struggling with the problem of Peak Oil.
Peak oil means we no longer have a infinite supply of oil.Maybe you saw the documentary film END OF SUBURBIA seehttp://www.endofsuburbia.com/previews.htm

High School dropout manges to kill a couple hundred women and children while throwing in a occasional rape. Mr Sempi Fi has now been transformed into Mr serial killer.
Mr high school dropout/serial killer now begins to experience extreme depression from his actions. Mental Wealth workers call it Post Traumatic
Stress Syndrome. But the only people who experience traumatic stress in Iraq are the Iraqi women being raped by Semper Fi's before they shot and killed them.
Good thing serial killer/high school dropout has never read the research
of Ian Stevenson MD whose groundbreaking study of 300 children who remember previous lives provides the science for the existence of reincarnation. seehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/12/db1201.xml

What this means for high school dropout is that he will be coming back
again for another life . Of course so will the people he murdered , so for practical purposes he has another couple hundred lives he has to live getting "wacked" by the life forms he semper fi'd.

The difference this time is the raped and murdered have had some time to ponder while they wait for him to pass over, how they will "do" Mr Semper Fi- the high school drop out serial killer.

how much more evidence do you need that taxpayer funded FBI agents
helped plan and cover up the President Kennedy assassination?

lois freeh -
5/27/2008

don't have time to stay and chat with you.
The X Files and 24 Hours with Jack whats his name are on tonight. Have to check this reality tv out.

for the uneducated and uneducable

a species that hires bodyguards to protect them looses the ability to protect itself and is doomed to extinction

April 15, 2006
For Ex-F.B.I. Agent Accused in Murders, a Case of What Might Have Been
By ALAN FEUER

In 1976, as a young F.B.I. agent, Mr. DeVecchio sold old handguns to undercover officers, who later sought to charge him with a felony. Had he been convicted, the case might have led to prison or his dismissal as an agent. But Mr. DeVecchio, who said he acted legally and to benefit a widow, was neither jailed nor fired.

The case against him was ultimately discarded without an indictment by officials at the highest levels of the Justice Department, a decision that the federal prosecutor in the original case says was largely made by the top aide to the deputy United States attorney general, a 32-year-old attorney named Rudolph W. Giuliani.

"Rudy expressed no other reason not to prosecute the guy except the guy was a cop," said the former prosecutor, Daniel M. Clements, who is now in private practice. "And he didn't want to embarrass the bureau."

Mr. Clements said last week that he recalled in detail his meetings 30 years ago with Mr. Giuliani, as well as his frustration that the case was dismissed as unimportant.

Whatever the level, if any, of Mr. Giuliani's role, the case stands as a long-buried piece of law enforcement history, a fork in the road that, if traversed differently, may have led to an entirely different set of consequences. Indeed, from the vantage point of 1976, the gun case may have seemed a minor matter. There was no way to know that seven years later, according to the state indictment filed last month in Brooklyn, Mr. DeVecchio would step across the line, helping a Mafia informant kill at least four people.

The gun case began in early 1976 when Mr. DeVecchio traveled from New York to King of Prussia, Pa., to sell a Nazi-era Luger at the Valley Forge Gun Show, which promotes itself as "a gun show in the truest American tradition."

Without a license, he moved through the stalls of the firearms bazaar, and was soon approached by Michael Flax, an undercover agent with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Mr. Flax said. Mr. Flax's job was to troll the show in plainclothes looking for such illicit deals. That year alone, he said, several people he caught similarly selling guns without paperwork went to prison. "I was usually like, 'Gee I'd like to get this gun,' " he said in an interview from his retirement home in San Diego. ' "Do we have to go through all the paperwork?' "

A few weeks later, Mr. Flax brought the case to Mr. Clements, then a young federal prosecutor in Baltimore. Mr. Clements is now in private practice and active in the Democratic Party, having given money to candidates like John Kerry and Al Gore.

A few months later, Mr. Clements said he told the F.B.I. as a courtesy that he was investigating one of its agents. A few weeks passed, he said, with discussions back and forth with F.B.I. officials in Maryland and in Washington. "The next person I heard from," he went on, "was Rudolph Giuliani."

Mr. Giuliani was, at that point, an aide to Harold Tyler, the deputy attorney general, who reviewed such cases. Mr. Giuliani had joined his staff in 1975 after serving in the United States attorney's office in Manhattan where he had helped direct the prosecution in the Prince of the City police corruption case.

Over several weeks, Mr. Clements said, Mr. Giuliani asked him to write a pair of memoranda on the case in which he noted that Mr. DeVecchio had sold the guns without the proper paperwork, a crime, Mr. Clements said, for which he thought there was sufficient evidence to prosecute. Mr. Clements said he attended a pair of meetings about the case with Mr. Giuliani, including one in Mr. Giuliani's office also attended by Mr. Tyler and Jervis Finney, the United States attorney in Maryland who was then Mr. Clements's boss.

Mr. Finney, now the chief lawyer for the governor of Maryland, said last week he has no recollection of the meeting. But Mr. Clements produced a datebook he said he had saved that listed a meeting with Mr. Giuliani in June 1976.

At that meeting and a subsequent meeting in October, Mr. Clements said Mr. Giuliani repeated his desire not to prosecute the case, saying the guns were old and the sale of them without paperwork did not warrant prosecution.

Judge Tyler, who Mr. Clements said was at the second meeting, died last year. The bottom line, after both meetings, Mr. Clements said, was that the case would be dropped.

In the ensuing years, Mr. DeVecchio rose to lead the F.B.I.'s special unit that investigates the Colombo crime family, a position in which he had success in part because of his relationship with a captain in the family, Gregory Scarpa Sr., who became his informant.

The closeness of that relationship ultimately led to a two-year inquiry of Mr. DeVecchio by the F.B.I. that ended in 1996 with the decision to bring no charges against him. But Mr. DeVecchio soon retired.

In 1997, the old gun case briefly resurfaced. At a federal appeals hearing in Brooklyn. Mr. DeVecchio was called as a witness by a gangster, Victor J. Orena, who was trying to win his freedom by suggesting that Mr. DeVecchio was a corrupt agent who had lied about the facts in his case. Under questioning by Gerald Shargel, Mr. Orena's lawyer, Mr. DeVecchio acknowledged selling the guns to the federal agents.

Mr. Shargel then went on to ask him: "Do you remember agents of the A.T.F. reporting to the F.B.I. and Rudolph Giuliani — not yet the mayor — that you had lied to those agents who questioned you, that when confronted with the crimes that you committed, you gave them false exculpatory statements?"

Mr. DeVecchio said that he did not.

In the new indictment, announced last month by Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, Mr. DeVecchio is accused of helping Mr. Scarpa commit at least four murders in the 1980's and early 1990's in exchange for weekly payments. Most of the victims had been talking to the authorities, prosecutors said, and thus were a threat to Mr. Scarpa.

When Mr. Clements read of the indictment, he said he was surprised. At the same time, he recalled the words that he and Mr. Flax had swapped, years ago, when the gun case, as he put it, "went away."

It was an old-time adage on those who break the law, a general theory of recidivist crime. "If someone's a bad actor, we'll get him again," he remembered telling Mr. Flax.

2nd read

Judge Rebuffs Ex-FBI Agent
Charge Retained In Mob-Hit Case
March 16, 2006
Staff and wire reports A Miami judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss a conspiracy charge against an ex-FBI agent accused of plotting with Boston mobsters more than two decades ago to kill a former World Jai Alai executive who ran frontons in Hartford and south Florida.

Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Barbara Areces said she found no merit in the argument by attorneys for the former FBI agent, John J. Connolly Jr., that a four-year statute of limitations had expired on a conspiracy, hatched in 1982, to kill John B. Callahan.

Dismissal of the conspiracy charge would have made it difficult for prosecutors to prove that Connolly had a role in the fatal shooting of Callahan, whose body was found in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami International Airport.

Areces agreed, however, to delay Connolly's trial date from this spring until Aug. 14. His lawyer, Manuel Casabielle, said he needs more time to review about 121,000 pages of documents related to the case and must still interview witnesses, including some in the federal witness protection program.

The judge's decision appears to clear the way for Florida prosecutors to try Connolly, 65, on charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy for allegedly providing information to members of Boston's notorious Winter Hill Gang - run by fugitive James "Whitey" Bulger - that led directly to Callahan's death. Bulger is also charged in Callahan's murder, along with Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi and John V. Martorano, the admitted triggerman.

Callahan's killing stemmed from a plot by the gang to take over World Jai Alai. Callahan, their alleged ally in the effort, got himself named president of World Jai Alai, but the takeover scheme soured when Tulsa millionaire Roger Wheeler bought the company.

The gang plotted Wheeler's murder, with Martorano eventually shooting him between the eyes in Tulsa. But Connolly, who had taken payments from the gang for years in exchange for law enforcement information, tipped Bulger that investigators had concluded that Callahan was somehow involved in the Wheeler killing, authorities said. Rather than risk Callahan confessing, Martorano shot Callahan in the head.

Connolly has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail. He could be sentenced to death if convicted.

lois freeh -
5/27/2008

FBI agent Ward sentenced for taking kickbacks.

Pepper spray study is tainted

Jim Herron Zamora, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Monday, May 20, 1996

Industry paid off FBI agent who did the research

SAN FRANCISCO -- The main study cited by law enforcement agencies to support using pepper spray is apparently tainted by a conflict of interest on the part of an FBI agent who conducted the research.

The pepper spray study was conducted in the late 1980s by FBI Special Agent Thomas W.W. Ward at the FBI academy in Virginia outside Washington, D.C. But Ward did not disclose at the time that he had accepted $57,000 from a pepper spray manufacturer that was laundered through a Florida company owned by his wife, Sheri.

On Friday, Ward was sentenced to two months in federal prison after he had earlier pleaded guilty to federal charges of accepting an illegal gift.

Prosecutors said his short sentence reflected his cooperation with the FBI investigation. The FBI fired Ward for not disclosing a financial conflict of interest.

Based on Ward's research and testing, the FBI decided to buy the chemical product Cap-Stun, whose active ingredient, oleoresin capsicum, is derived from cayenne pepper. The spray is intended to temporarily incapacitate aggressive people by burning their skin and eyes and inflaming their respiratory passages, making breathing painful and difficult.

Critics of pepper spray say the FBI research has been discredited and are calling for further studies. But Bay Area law enforcement agencies, including San Francisco, have no plans to quit using it.

The San Francisco Police Department faces two lawsuits alleging that pepper spray may have led to the death of two suspects - Mark Garcia and Aaron Williams - against whom police used the spray repeatedly during struggles.

"The king has no clothes. I think law enforcement agencies were duped by a chemical company who wanted to sell their product," said Frederick Remer, an attorney who represents the family of Garcia, who died April 7 after he was sprayed during an arrest by San Francisco police. "They approved it as fast as they could. I think they have a real problem in San Francisco and across the nation."

Under fire from the public and civil rights advocates, San Francisco's Police Commission recently re-examined pepper spray, voting to go on using it. Last month, San Francisco's district attorney forbade his investigators to carry the spray, even though they have never used it.

Pepper spray added to arsenals

Remer said local law enforcement officials across the country were quick to add pepper spray to their arsenal after Ward stood behind it.

"He was very instrumental in getting this approved around the nation," Remer said. "Once the feds approved this, local law enforcement followed like a bunch of puppies."

Ward trained FBI agents and other law enforcers in the use of oleoresin capsicum products, including Cap-Stun. Ward, then a leader in the FBI's Firearms Training Unit, lectured extensively on pepper spray use.

Prosecutors said that from December 1989 through 1990, Ward received about $5,000 a month for a total of $57,500, from Luckey Police Products, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company that produced and sold the spray.

In California, films used by the state Department of Justice to teach local law enforcement agencies about pepper spray quoted Ward and contained footage from an FBI exercise he had overseen.

In 1992, state Attorney General Dan Lungren promised mandatory safety studies when he authorized provisional use of the spray in California. The ACLU maintains the required research has not been done.

"It's our position that the FBI work has tainted everything that followed it. It laid a foundation of sand under a house of cards," said Allen Parachini, the American Civil Liberties Union's expert on pepper spray.

"Most police agencies don't recognize how dicey this situation is. San Francisco obviously has a serious training deficit on pepper spray. There are some policy and training issues . . . for which the chickens are now coming to roost."

The ACLU says 37 people have died in California after being hit with pepper spray since January 1993. Most recently a Ventura County man died on May 8 after he was sprayed.

"Pepper spray is being used at the rate of once an hour and people are dying at the hands of law enforcement at the rate of once a month," said ACLU attorney John Crew, who monitors San Francisco police.

"We're not calling for a complete ban on its use," his colleague Parachini adds. "But there are clearly serious problems that we see coming out. This can create a lot of liability for police agencies. We would like to see a lot more research on this product and a lot more research on alternative methods" for police to safely subdue troublesome suspects.

lois freeh -
5/27/2008

Ray Kohlman, a Massachusetts attorney who has spent the past 19 years investigating the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., told students he believed a massive government conspiracy has concealed the true identity of King's assassin.

Kohlman, who conducted his investigation for the King family and for James Earl Ray, the convicted murderer, spoke before an audience of 14 students in the Elliott Program Center on Friday, in an event sponsored by Columbae House.

According to Kohlman, a Memphis police officer named Earl Clark actually committed the crim,e and Ray was framed by the federal government Kohlman said he has evidence that Clark was hired by a friend named Loyd Jowers to kill King. Jowers, in turn, Kohlman said, was paid $100,000 by "Fat Frank" Liberto, a Mafia boss who may have been in league with the FBI and U.S. army.

Kohlman said King's April 1967 speech, in which he denounced the Vietnam War, led the government to worry that his words would lead to an anti-war uprising in the already volatile South.

"The FBI did not pull the trigger [in King's assassination]," Kohlman said. "But they were definitely implicated in his death."

Part of Kohlman's claim was substantiated in civil court two months ago when a jury unanimously found that Jowers had been implicated in King's assassination. Although Kohlman said Jowers is the key to the whole assassination, he believes the conspiracy goes far deeper.

On April 3, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tenn. to mediate a strike of local garbage workers. On that night, the Lorraine Motel, where King was staying, received a mysterious phone call saying that King needed to move to a room overlooking the pool.

"The room he had before was under the balcony," said Kohlman, a location from which it would have been impossible for an assassin to get a clear shot.

The next evening, King was gunned down as he stood on the balcony of his room. Prosecutors said Ray, an escaped felon who was in the area at the time of the assassination, fired the fatal shot from a building across the street from the motel.

Kohlman said Ray was coerced to accept a guilty plea. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison but continued to seek a new trial until his death last February.

According to Kohlman, the Feds' case was shaky from the beginning. The prosecution's chief witness, Charlie Stevens, claimed he saw Ray coming out of the bathroom from which the shot was supposedly fired, soon after the assassination took place. But Kohlman said he learned from Stevens' wife that at the time Stevens was "too drunk to know his own name."

Kohlman proposes instead that Clark fired the fatal round. Not only was Clark a good friend of Jowers, Kohlman said, his alibi didn't work and he was "anti-black," because his brother had been killed by a black man.

Several witnesses said that seconds after the shot was fired, they saw a man jump off a retaining wall across from the motel and get into a police car.

Kohlman said that on April 4, the U.S. Army stationed three teams of snipers on buildings surrounding the Lorraine Motel.

He believes the teams had orders to kill King if a riot broke out. But Kohlman said the army wasn't going to take the chance that a riot might not happen - they actually engineered one themselves. They even attempted - but failed - to incite a riot by kicking "a black group of rabble rousers" called 'The Invaders' out of their hotel.

Although he has not been able to solidly connect the Army's assassination plans with Clark, Kohlman proposes that the snipers' presence may have been a backup plan in case the first assassination attempt fell through.

Kohlman said he has evidence that the military or the CIA probably hired a Portuguese immigrant named Raul to provide them with a perpetrator - Ray - whom they could blame for King's murder.

Raul was never questioned by the government and recently retired from his work in the import-export business.

Yet when Raul's wife was interviewed last year, she said, "You know, this is a good country - America. The government comes around every now and then and checks to see that nobody has been fooling around with our phone. And they check to make sure that all the cars on the street are supposed to be there."

"Sometimes I say to myself - Is this real?," Kohlman asked. "It is."

Don Bohning -
5/26/2008

There are those who still believe Lincoln was the victim of an assassination conspiracy. There there was JFK. Now there is RFK. Fortunately, Mel Ayton is around to thoroughly debunk such historical distortion as recently publicized in a BBC documentary. Unfortunately, there are still those guillible folks who will believe it.
Don Bohning

Mel D Ayton -
5/26/2008

Lois Freeh - really? A typical example of the conspiracy lunatics who inhabit the world wide web.

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

SPOTSYLVANIA, Va. A former F-B-I analyst has been sentenced to seven years in prison for having sex with a young girl in Spotsylvania County.
Forty-four-year-old Anthony John Lesko entered an Alford plea yesterday in Spotsylvania County Circuit Court to nine counts of felony indecent liberties upon a child. An Alford plea means Lesko doesn't admit guilt but believes there is enough evidence for a conviction.

Under a plea agreement, he was sentenced to seven years in prison with another 15 years suspended. He also was ordered to pay ten-thousand dollars in restitution to cover the cost of the girl's mental-health counseling.

Authorities say Lesko engaged in a sex act with her nine times, beginning when she was nine years old.

Lesko's attorney says he worked as an intelligence analyst at the F-B-I for 17 years before moving to Jacksonville, Florida.

According to the plea, Lesko said he was a victim in the case. He said the girl initiated the contact.

FBI Agent Accused Of Masturbating In Public

May 25, 2007 09:02 PM
FBI Agent Accused Of Masturbating In Public

Posted by, Marissa Pasquet KOLD News 13 News Editor

FBI Special Agent Ryan Seese, 34, is facing sex offense charges after a cleaning woman said she found him masturbating in a women's lavatory on campus, according to a University of Arizona police spokesman.

Seese was cited on suspicion of three misdemeanors, public sexual indecency, criminal trespassing and indecent exposure.

According to authorities, Seese was released to an FBI supervisor.

UA authorities say a cleaning woman opened a Student Union restroom stall, and spotted a man playing with himself.

She ran out of the lavatory and reported the incident to her supervisor, who called police.

UA Police say the woman pointed out the man to an officer taking her report.

Police says, when the officer tried to stop him, the man ran into a parking garage just north of the Student Union where he was caught, handcuffed and cited.

Police say Seese told the police officer he was with law enforcement.

It is unknown why Seese was at UA or where he is assigned in Arizona.

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

witness who charged FBI agent with pedophilia found murdered?

two uneasy reads

Prosecutors move to dismiss charges against former Scout leader

January 3, 2007

NEW HAVEN, Conn. --Federal prosecutors have moved to dismiss charges against a retired FBI agent who was indicted on child sex charges dating back more than a decade when he was a Boy Scout leader, in response to the death of his accuser.

William Hutton, 63, of Killingworth, was arrested in February on charges he enticed a member of his Scout troop to Maine for the purpose of sexual activity in 1994 and 1995.

Prosecutor John A. Danaher III moved to dismiss the indictment on Dec. 19, and Judge Mark R. Kravitz granted the motion three days later, federal court records show.

On Dec. 26, the prosecutor moved to dismiss a revised indictment that had been returned by a federal grand jury in late March. There was no indication in court records that Kravitz has issued a ruling on that indictment.

Both indictments alleged crimes against the same person, who has never been publicly identified. The newer indictment added allegations that an August 1995 trip also included a stop in New Hampshire for illegal sexual activity.

Both of Danaher's motions cited "the sudden and unexpected death" of the accuser.

"Mr. Hutton was very upset by the news of the passing of the gentleman," Keefe said.

Hutton had been released on a $200,000 bond. He may not own any firearms or have any unsupervised contact with children. He was also ordered to stay away from playgrounds, schools, arcades or anywhere children congregate.

The case had been scheduled to go to trial this month in U.S. District Court in New Haven.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) _ A retired FBI agent was indicted Friday on federal child sex charges dating back more than a decade when he was a Boy Scout leader.

William Hutton, 63, of Killingworth, was arrested Friday. The federal grand jury indictment offers few details about the case but accuses Hutton of enticing a member of his Scout troop to Maine for the purpose of sexual activity in 1994 and 1995.

"It's obviously devastating. He was an FBI agent in this district and was reputed in this district," defense attorney Hugh Keefe said. "The people who worked with him in the U.S. attorney's office and FBI respected him."

Keefe said the investigation has been going on for years. He would not discuss the details of the case or how the allegations surfaced.

Investigators asked anyone who knows anything about the case to call the FBI. U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor said that's standard practice whenever there might be more victims.

If convicted on all four charges, Hutton faces up to 30 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.

Hutton was released on a $200,00 bond. He may not own any firearms or have any unsupervised contact with children. He was also ordered to stay away from playgrounds, schools, arcades or anywhere children congregate.

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

Experiments to create Manchurian Candidate “super spies” must be understood in their social and historical context, which is one of pervasive, systematic mind control experimentation, not by a few isolated renegade doctors, but by the leaders of psychiatry and the major medical schools. Because this book is likely to provoke extreme reactions, I have taken great care to present only facts which are fully documented and based on objective, public domain information. P. E

The basic premise of the book The Manchurian Candidate [1] is that a group of American POWs in the Korean War is brainwashed while crossing through Manchuria to freedom. They arrive back in the US amnesic for the period of brainwashing, and one of them has been programmed to be an assassin. His target is a candidate for president of the US. His Asian handlers control him with a hypnotically implanted trigger, a particular playing card. P. 23

Multiple personality disorder is now classified by the American Psychiatric Association [2] as dissociative identity disorder. According to my definition, the Manchurian Candidate is an experimentally created dissociative identity disorder that meets the following four criteria:

* Created deliberately
* A new identity is implanted
* Amnesia barriers are created
* Used in simulated or actual operations

That the CIA created Manchurian Candidates is a fact, and easy to understand and justify from a national security perspective. I am not criticizing the CIA or the military in this book because I am not an expert on intelligence matters. I am a psychiatrist specializing in dissociative disorders. P. G

BLUEBIRD blows the whistle on extensive political abuse of psychiatry in North America in the second half of the 20th century. Many thousands of prisoners and mental patients were subjected to unethical mind control experiments by leading psychiatrists and medical schools. Organized academic psychiatry has never acknowledged this history. The network of mind control doctors involved in BLUEBIRD has done a great deal of harm to the field of psychiatry and to psychiatric patients. My goal is to break the ugly silence. P. K

The participation of psychiatrists and medical schools in mind control research was not a matter of a few scattered doctors pursuing questionable lines of investigation. Rather, the mind control experimentation was systematic, organized, and involved many leading psychiatrists and medical schools. The mind control experiments were interwoven with radiation experiments, and research on chemical and biological weapons. They were funded by the CIA, Army, Navy, Air Force, and by other agencies including the Public Health Service and the Scottish Rite Foundation. The psychiatrists, psychologists, neurosurgeons, and other contractors conducting the work were imbedded in a broad network of doctors, and much of the research was published in medical journals. The climate was permissive, supportive, and approving of mind control experimentation. P. F, 1

The work of the mind control doctors did not occur in a vacuum. The importation of Nazi doctors to the US through secret programs like PAPERCLIP is part of the context. After the end of World War II, German scientists and technical experts were being held in a variety of detainment camps. The British, French, Americans, and Russians became embroiled in highly competitive recruiting efforts to secure the services of these German specialists. The prospect of losing the industrial and scientific services of these German experts lead to the creation of Project PAPERCLIP. [3][4][5] Over 1,000 German scientists were secretly brought into the US without State Department approval. The most famous individual brought over in this manner was Werner von Braun, the rocket scientist. Von Braun was the head of the German V2 rocket program. The NASA rockets that took Neil Armstrong to the moon were built by von Braun and his colleagues. Medical doctors also came over under PAPERCLIP. P. 3, 4

Likewise, the Tuskeegee Syphilis Study helps us understand how mind control experimentation was not only tolerated by medical professionals, but published in peer-reviewed literature. [6][7] The Study, started in Alabama in 1932, was run by the Public Health Service. 399 illiterate, poor rural black men with syphilis were recruited as subjects, along with 201 controls without syphilis. The purpose of the Study was to make sure the 399 men never got treatment. The subjects and their families weren’t told they had syphilis and didn’t know it was treatable. They were told that they had bad blood. P. 1, 9, 10

The cure for syphilis, penicillin, was introduced in the early 1940’s. It was withheld from the Tuskeegee men for 30 years. The published results of the Study showed the men with untreated syphilis were sicker and died younger than controls. [8] How many women were infected with syphilis because these men were deliberately not treated? How many children were born with syphilis because of the Study? The Tuskeegee Syphilis Study was eventually shut down in 1972 because of the efforts of an investigative journalist. There is no evidence to suggest that the government or the medical progression had any intention of closing the study as of 1972. People and organizations that knew about the Study included the Surgeon General, the American Heart Association, and the Center for Disease Control. Throughout its 40-year course, the Tuskeegee Study was praised and received various honors. P. 9-13

The Tuskeegee Study establishes that a large network of doctors and organization were willing to participate in, fund, and condone grossly unethical medical experimentation into the 1970’s. The Study proves that considerable external pressure is often required before the medical profession takes the necessary action to terminate such experimentation. P. 14

Unethical radiation experiments were conducted on about 600 subjects [9][10][11] in the US beginning in the 1940’s and running into the 1970’s. Many people were injected with plutonium and exposed to other forms of radiation without their informed consent. 18 patients were injected with plutonium in an experiment run by the MANHATTAN PROJECT. Prisoners in Washington and Oregon state prisons were paid to have their testicles irradiated. They got $5 a month for the irradiation. During the experiment, which ran from 1963 to 1971, the subjects’ testicles were exposed to 600 roentgen of radiation, which is 100 times the maximum recommended dose. P. 15-17

Clouds of radioactive material were released into the atmosphere and tracked as they moved downwind, often through populated areas. In one experiment code-named GREEN RUN, radioactive iodine-131 released from the Hanford Nuclear Facility drifted over Spokane. The cloud contained hundreds of times as much radiation as was released accidentally at Three Mile Island in 1979. P. 17

As was true of mind control and biological weapon research, radiation research experiments were conducted on children and unwitting civilians. In 1961, researchers at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston University School of Medicine gave radioactive iodine to seventy retarded children at Wrentham State School. At Fernald School, MIT gave radioactive substances to children by putting it in their food. No risks of radioactivity were mentioned in the consent form signed by the parents. The consent form stated that the purpose of the experiments was “helping to improve the nutrition of our children.” Dr. Saul Krugman of New York University and his staff deliberately injected severely mentally retarded children at Willowbrook State School with hepatitis virus in the 1950’s and 1960’s, [12] funded by the Army Medical Research and Development Command. To date there has been no compensation for victims of unethical biological experiments. P. 15, 18, 19

Army doctors were actively involved in LSD testing at least until the late 1970’s. Subjects of LSD experiments included children as young as five years old, and brain electrodes were implanted in children as young as 11 years of age. Four of the CIA’s MKULTRA Subprojects were on children. The mind control doctors included Presidents of the American Psychiatric Association and psychiatrists who received full-page obituaries in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Responsibility for the unethical experimentation lies first with the individual doctors, but also collectively with the medical profession and with academia as a whole. P. 21

Cold War Mind Control Experimentation

BLUEBIRD was approved by the CIA director on April 20, 1950. In August 1951, the Project was renamed ARTICHOKE. BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE included a great deal of work on the creation of amnesia, hypnotic couriers, and the Manchurian Candidate. [13][14] ARTICHOKE documents prove that hypnotic couriers functioned effectively in real-life simulations conducted by the CIA in the early 1950’s. The degree to which such individuals were used in actual operations is still classified. P. 23

The BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE documents available through the Freedom of Information Act, like all such documents, are heavily redacted. A great deal of text has been whited out, and other documents must still be entirely classified. BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE were administered in a compartmented fashion. The details of the programs were kept secret even form other personnel within the CIA. When asked why LSD research done under ARTICHOKE was hidden from the CIA Committee in charge of ARTICHOKE, Sydney Gottlieb, Chief, Medical Staff, Technical Services Division, CIA, responded, “I imagine the only reason would have been concern for broadening awareness of its existence.” P. 25, 27

An article in the February 18, 1979 Wilmington Sunday News Journal states: “The ARTICHOKE interrogation was conducted in a safe house in the remote countryside staffed by security-cleared personnel. It was conducted under medical cover of a routine physical and psychological assessment. The Subject was transported to the safe house in a ‘covert car.’ At the safe house he was given a conventional interrogation and then some whiskey. This was followed by two grams of Phenobarbital, which put him to sleep. The next day a lie detector test was given, and the Subject was given intravenous chemicals. Following the chemically-assisted interrogation, the ARTICHOKE techniques were applied in three stages. A false memory was introduced into the Subject’s mind without his conscious control of the process. The procedure was repeated again with interrogation added.” P. 28

ARTICHOKE operations involved detailed, systematic creation of specific amnesia barriers, new identities and hypnotically implanted codes and triggers. An ARTICHOKE document dated 7 January 1953 [15] describes the experimental creation of multiple personality in two 19-year old girls by the CIA. “H” is used as shorthand for hypnotic, hypnotized, or hypnotism: “These subjects have clearly demonstrated that they can pass from a fully awake state to a deep H controlled state via the telephone, via some very subtle signal that cannot be detected by other persons in the room, and without the other individuals being able to note the change. It has been clearly shown that physically, individuals can be induced into H by telephone, by receiving written matter, or by the use of code, signal, or words, and that control of those hypnotized can be passed from one individual to another without great difficulty. It has also been shown by experimentation with these girls that they can act as unwilling couriers for information purposes, and that they can be conditioned to a point where they believe a change in identity on their part even on the polygraph.” P. 32

Another ARTICHOKE document describes “Analogous Case #3.” “A CIA Security Office employee was hypnotized and given a false identity. She defended it hotly, denying her true name and rationalizing with conviction the possession of identity cards made out to her real self. Later, having had the false identity erased by suggestion, she was asked if she had ever heard of the name she had been defending as her own five minutes before. She thought, shook her head, and said, ‘That’s a pseudo if I ever heard one.’ Apparently she had true amnesia for the entire episode.” P. 32, 33

In an experiment described in a document entitled “SI and H experimentation [16] (25 September 1951)”, two female subjects took part in an exercise involving the planting of a bomb. Both subjects performed perfectly and were fully amnesic for the exercise: “[Whited out] was instructed that upon awakening, she would proceed to [whited out] room where she would wait at the desk for a telephone call. Upon receiving the call, a person known as “Jim” would engage her in normal conversation. During the course of the conversation, this individual would mention a code word. When she heard this code word, she would pass into a SI trance state, but would not close her eyes and remain perfectly normal and continue the telephone conversation. P. 37

She was told that upon conclusion of the telephone conversation, she would then carry out instructions: [Whited out] was shown an electric timing device. She was informed that this device was a bomb, and then instructed how to set the device. After [whited out] learned how to set and attach the device, she was told to take the timing device which was in a briefcase, and proceed to the ladies room. In the ladies room, she would be met by a girl whom she had never seen who would identify herself by the code word “New York.” [whited out] was then to show this individual how to attach and set the timing device and further instructions would be given that the timing device was to be carried in the briefcase to [whited out] room, placed in the nearest empty electric-light plug and concealed in the bottom, left-hand drawer of [whited out] desk, with the device set for 82 seconds and turned on.” P. 37, 38

The BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE materials establish conclusively that full Manchurian Candidates were created and tested successfully by physicians with TOP SECRET clearance from the CIA. P. 61

As well as being potential couriers and infiltration agents, the subjects could function in effect as hypnotically controlled cameras. They could enter a room or building, memorize materials quickly, leave the building, and then be amnesic for the entire episode. The memorized material could then be retrieved by a handler using a previously implanted code or signal, without the amnesia being disturbed. Hypnosis was not the mind control doctors’ only method for creation of controlled amnesia, however. Drugs, magnetic fields, sound waves, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, and many other methods were studied under BLUEBIRD and ARTHICHOKE. P. 38

Another problem addressed repeatedly in the documents is called “The Problem of Disposal of Subjects.” Several personnel recommended the use of lobotomies for this purpose, but according to the documents this was rejected as too unethical and too high a negative publicity risk for the CIA. P. 41

The usage of electric shock to the brain for the creation of amnesia with hypnosis was discussed by an ARTICHOKE document dated 3 December 1951: “[Whited out] is reported to be an authority on electric shock. He is a psychiatrist of considerable note. [Whited out] explained that electric shock might be of considerable interest to the ‘Artichoke’ type of work. He stated that the standard electric-shock machine (Reiter) could be used. He stated that using this machine with convulsive treatment, he could guarantee amnesia for certain periods of time, and particularly he could guarantee amnesia for any knowledge of use of the convulsive shock. He stated that the lower setting of the machine produced a different type of shock. When this lower current type of shock was applied without convulsion, it had the effect of making a man talk. He said that this type of shock produced in the individual excruciating pain. He stated that there would be no question that the individual would be quite willing to give information if threatened with the use of this machine. It was [whited out] opinion that an individual could gradually be reduced through the use of electro-shock treatment to the vegetable level.” P. 44

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

Who does not think Sirhan was a Manchurian Candidate? .....

BLUEBIRD
Deliberate Creation of Multiple
Personality by Psychiatrists

By Colin A. Ross MD

A 10-Page Summary

In this summary of Bluebird, Dr. Ross describes unethical experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new identities, hypnotic access codes, and new memories in the minds of experimental subjects. His research is based on 15,000 pages of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Dr. Ross is a past president of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation. Join in powerfully creating a better world for all by spreading the word.

Historical Background

The Manchurian Candidate is compelling evidence for the reality of therapist-created multiple personality disorder. The condition has been created deliberately by mind control doctors. Experiments to create Manchurian Candidate “super spies” must be understood in their social and historical context, which is one of pervasive, systematic mind control experimentation, not by a few isolated renegade doctors, but by the leaders of psychiatry and the major medical schools. Because this book is likely to provoke extreme reactions, I have taken great care to present only facts which are fully documented and based on objective, public domain information. P. E

The basic premise of the book The Manchurian Candidate [1] is that a group of American POWs in the Korean War is brainwashed while crossing through Manchuria to freedom. They arrive back in the US amnesic for the period of brainwashing, and one of them has been programmed to be an assassin. His target is a candidate for president of the US. His Asian handlers control him with a hypnotically implanted trigger, a particular playing card. P. 23

Multiple personality disorder is now classified by the American Psychiatric Association [2] as dissociative identity disorder. According to my definition, the Manchurian Candidate is an experimentally created dissociative identity disorder that meets the following four criteria:

* Created deliberately
* A new identity is implanted
* Amnesia barriers are created
* Used in simulated or actual operations

That the CIA created Manchurian Candidates is a fact, and easy to understand and justify from a national security perspective. I am not criticizing the CIA or the military in this book because I am not an expert on intelligence matters. I am a psychiatrist specializing in dissociative disorders. P. G

BLUEBIRD blows the whistle on extensive political abuse of psychiatry in North America in the second half of the 20th century. Many thousands of prisoners and mental patients were subjected to unethical mind control experiments by leading psychiatrists and medical schools. Organized academic psychiatry has never acknowledged this history. The network of mind control doctors involved in BLUEBIRD has done a great deal of harm to the field of psychiatry and to psychiatric patients. My goal is to break the ugly silence. P. K

The participation of psychiatrists and medical schools in mind control research was not a matter of a few scattered doctors pursuing questionable lines of investigation. Rather, the mind control experimentation was systematic, organized, and involved many leading psychiatrists and medical schools. The mind control experiments were interwoven with radiation experiments, and research on chemical and biological weapons. They were funded by the CIA, Army, Navy, Air Force, and by other agencies including the Public Health Service and the Scottish Rite Foundation. The psychiatrists, psychologists, neurosurgeons, and other contractors conducting the work were imbedded in a broad network of doctors, and much of the research was published in medical journals. The climate was permissive, supportive, and approving of mind control experimentation. P. F, 1

The work of the mind control doctors did not occur in a vacuum. The importation of Nazi doctors to the US through secret programs like PAPERCLIP is part of the context. After the end of World War II, German scientists and technical experts were being held in a variety of detainment camps. The British, French, Americans, and Russians became embroiled in highly competitive recruiting efforts to secure the services of these German specialists. The prospect of losing the industrial and scientific services of these German experts lead to the creation of Project PAPERCLIP. [3][4][5] Over 1,000 German scientists were secretly brought into the US without State Department approval. The most famous individual brought over in this manner was Werner von Braun, the rocket scientist. Von Braun was the head of the German V2 rocket program. The NASA rockets that took Neil Armstrong to the moon were built by von Braun and his colleagues. Medical doctors also came over under PAPERCLIP. P. 3, 4

Likewise, the Tuskeegee Syphilis Study helps us understand how mind control experimentation was not only tolerated by medical professionals, but published in peer-reviewed literature. [6][7] The Study, started in Alabama in 1932, was run by the Public Health Service. 399 illiterate, poor rural black men with syphilis were recruited as subjects, along with 201 controls without syphilis. The purpose of the Study was to make sure the 399 men never got treatment. The subjects and their families weren’t told they had syphilis and didn’t know it was treatable. They were told that they had bad blood. P. 1, 9, 10

The cure for syphilis, penicillin, was introduced in the early 1940’s. It was withheld from the Tuskeegee men for 30 years. The published results of the Study showed the men with untreated syphilis were sicker and died younger than controls. [8] How many women were infected with syphilis because these men were deliberately not treated? How many children were born with syphilis because of the Study? The Tuskeegee Syphilis Study was eventually shut down in 1972 because of the efforts of an investigative journalist. There is no evidence to suggest that the government or the medical progression had any intention of closing the study as of 1972. People and organizations that knew about the Study included the Surgeon General, the American Heart Association, and the Center for Disease Control. Throughout its 40-year course, the Tuskeegee Study was praised and received various honors. P. 9-13

The Tuskeegee Study establishes that a large network of doctors and organization were willing to participate in, fund, and condone grossly unethical medical experimentation into the 1970’s. The Study proves that considerable external pressure is often required before the medical profession takes the necessary action to terminate such experimentation. P. 14

Unethical radiation experiments were conducted on about 600 subjects [9][10][11] in the US beginning in the 1940’s and running into the 1970’s. Many people were injected with plutonium and exposed to other forms of radiation without their informed consent. 18 patients were injected with plutonium in an experiment run by the MANHATTAN PROJECT. Prisoners in Washington and Oregon state prisons were paid to have their testicles irradiated. They got $5 a month for the irradiation. During the experiment, which ran from 1963 to 1971, the subjects’ testicles were exposed to 600 roentgen of radiation, which is 100 times the maximum recommended dose. P. 15-17

Clouds of radioactive material were released into the atmosphere and tracked as they moved downwind, often through populated areas. In one experiment code-named GREEN RUN, radioactive iodine-131 released from the Hanford Nuclear Facility drifted over Spokane. The cloud contained hundreds of times as much radiation as was released accidentally at Three Mile Island in 1979. P. 17

As was true of mind control and biological weapon research, radiation research experiments were conducted on children and unwitting civilians. In 1961, researchers at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston University School of Medicine gave radioactive iodine to seventy retarded children at Wrentham State School. At Fernald School, MIT gave radioactive substances to children by putting it in their food. No risks of radioactivity were mentioned in the consent form signed by the parents. The consent form stated that the purpose of the experiments was “helping to improve the nutrition of our children.” Dr. Saul Krugman of New York University and his staff deliberately injected severely mentally retarded children at Willowbrook State School with hepatitis virus in the 1950’s and 1960’s, [12] funded by the Army Medical Research and Development Command. To date there has been no compensation for victims of unethical biological experiments. P. 15, 18, 19

Army doctors were actively involved in LSD testing at least until the late 1970’s. Subjects of LSD experiments included children as young as five years old, and brain electrodes were implanted in children as young as 11 years of age. Four of the CIA’s MKULTRA Subprojects were on children. The mind control doctors included Presidents of the American Psychiatric Association and psychiatrists who received full-page obituaries in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Responsibility for the unethical experimentation lies first with the individual doctors, but also collectively with the medical profession and with academia as a whole. P. 21

Cold War Mind Control Experimentation

BLUEBIRD was approved by the CIA director on April 20, 1950. In August 1951, the Project was renamed ARTICHOKE. BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE included a great deal of work on the creation of amnesia, hypnotic couriers, and the Manchurian Candidate. [13][14] ARTICHOKE documents prove that hypnotic couriers functioned effectively in real-life simulations conducted by the CIA in the early 1950’s. The degree to which such individuals were used in actual operations is still classified. P. 23

The BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE documents available through the Freedom of Information Act, like all such documents, are heavily redacted. A great deal of text has been whited out, and other documents must still be entirely classified. BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE were administered in a compartmented fashion. The details of the programs were kept secret even form other personnel within the CIA. When asked why LSD research done under ARTICHOKE was hidden from the CIA Committee in charge of ARTICHOKE, Sydney Gottlieb, Chief, Medical Staff, Technical Services Division, CIA, responded, “I imagine the only reason would have been concern for broadening awareness of its existence.” P. 25, 27

An article in the February 18, 1979 Wilmington Sunday News Journal states: “The ARTICHOKE interrogation was conducted in a safe house in the remote countryside staffed by security-cleared personnel. It was conducted under medical cover of a routine physical and psychological assessment. The Subject was transported to the safe house in a ‘covert car.’ At the safe house he was given a conventional interrogation and then some whiskey. This was followed by two grams of Phenobarbital, which put him to sleep. The next day a lie detector test was given, and the Subject was given intravenous chemicals. Following the chemically-assisted interrogation, the ARTICHOKE techniques were applied in three stages. A false memory was introduced into the Subject’s mind without his conscious control of the process. The procedure was repeated again with interrogation added.” P. 28

ARTICHOKE operations involved detailed, systematic creation of specific amnesia barriers, new identities and hypnotically implanted codes and triggers. An ARTICHOKE document dated 7 January 1953 [15] describes the experimental creation of multiple personality in two 19-year old girls by the CIA. “H” is used as shorthand for hypnotic, hypnotized, or hypnotism: “These subjects have clearly demonstrated that they can pass from a fully awake state to a deep H controlled state via the telephone, via some very subtle signal that cannot be detected by other persons in the room, and without the other individuals being able to note the change. It has been clearly shown that physically, individuals can be induced into H by telephone, by receiving written matter, or by the use of code, signal, or words, and that control of those hypnotized can be passed from one individual to another without great difficulty. It has also been shown by experimentation with these girls that they can act as unwilling couriers for information purposes, and that they can be conditioned to a point where they believe a change in identity on their part even on the polygraph.” P. 32

Another ARTICHOKE document describes “Analogous Case #3.” “A CIA Security Office employee was hypnotized and given a false identity. She defended it hotly, denying her true name and rationalizing with conviction the possession of identity cards made out to her real self. Later, having had the false identity erased by suggestion, she was asked if she had ever heard of the name she had been defending as her own five minutes before. She thought, shook her head, and said, ‘That’s a pseudo if I ever heard one.’ Apparently she had true amnesia for the entire episode.” P. 32, 33

In an experiment described in a document entitled “SI and H experimentation [16] (25 September 1951)”, two female subjects took part in an exercise involving the planting of a bomb. Both subjects performed perfectly and were fully amnesic for the exercise: “[Whited out] was instructed that upon awakening, she would proceed to [whited out] room where she would wait at the desk for a telephone call. Upon receiving the call, a person known as “Jim” would engage her in normal conversation. During the course of the conversation, this individual would mention a code word. When she heard this code word, she would pass into a SI trance state, but would not close her eyes and remain perfectly normal and continue the telephone conversation. P. 37

She was told that upon conclusion of the telephone conversation, she would then carry out instructions: [Whited out] was shown an electric timing device. She was informed that this device was a bomb, and then instructed how to set the device. After [whited out] learned how to set and attach the device, she was told to take the timing device which was in a briefcase, and proceed to the ladies room. In the ladies room, she would be met by a girl whom she had never seen who would identify herself by the code word “New York.” [whited out] was then to show this individual how to attach and set the timing device and further instructions would be given that the timing device was to be carried in the briefcase to [whited out] room, placed in the nearest empty electric-light plug and concealed in the bottom, left-hand drawer of [whited out] desk, with the device set for 82 seconds and turned on.” P. 37, 38

The BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE materials establish conclusively that full Manchurian Candidates were created and tested successfully by physicians with TOP SECRET clearance from the CIA. P. 61

As well as being potential couriers and infiltration agents, the subjects could function in effect as hypnotically controlled cameras. They could enter a room or building, memorize materials quickly, leave the building, and then be amnesic for the entire episode. The memorized material could then be retrieved by a handler using a previously implanted code or signal, without the amnesia being disturbed. Hypnosis was not the mind control doctors’ only method for creation of controlled amnesia, however. Drugs, magnetic fields, sound waves, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, and many other methods were studied under BLUEBIRD and ARTHICHOKE. P. 38

Another problem addressed repeatedly in the documents is called “The Problem of Disposal of Subjects.” Several personnel recommended the use of lobotomies for this purpose, but according to the documents this was rejected as too unethical and too high a negative publicity risk for the CIA. P. 41

The usage of electric shock to the brain for the creation of amnesia with hypnosis was discussed by an ARTICHOKE document dated 3 December 1951: “[Whited out] is reported to be an authority on electric shock. He is a psychiatrist of considerable note. [Whited out] explained that electric shock might be of considerable interest to the ‘Artichoke’ type of work. He stated that the standard electric-shock machine (Reiter) could be used. He stated that using this machine with convulsive treatment, he could guarantee amnesia for certain periods of time, and particularly he could guarantee amnesia for any knowledge of use of the convulsive shock. He stated that the lower setting of the machine produced a different type of shock. When this lower current type of shock was applied without convulsion, it had the effect of making a man talk. He said that this type of shock produced in the individual excruciating pain. He stated that there would be no question that the individual would be quite willing to give information if threatened with the use of this machine. It was [whited out] opinion that an individual could gradually be reduced through the use of electro-shock treatment to the vegetable level.” P. 44

Project MKULTRA

ARTICHOKE and BLUEBIRD were administratively rolled over into MKULTRA, which was created by the CIA on April 3, 1953. MKULTRA was in turn rolled over into MKSEARCH on June 7, 1964. MKSEARCH then ran until June 1972, at which time extensive shredding of MKULTRA and MKSEARCH files was ordered by the Director of the CIA, Richard Helms. The surviving MKULTRA documents can be obtained from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act. There was a round of declassification of mind control documents in the 1970’s which were the foundation of books published in the 1970’s and 1980’s. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23] P. 7

A document entitled, “Hypnotic Experimentation and Research, 10 February 1954” [24] describes a simulation experiment of relevance to the creation of Manchurian Candidate assassins: “Miss [whited out] was then instructed (having previously expressed a fear of firearms) that she would use every method at her disposal to awaken miss [whited out] (now in a deep hypnotic sleep), and failing this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it at Miss [whited out]. She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to “kill” [whited out] for failing to awaken. Miss [whited out] carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded) gun at [whited out] and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep. After proper suggestions were made, both were awakened and expressed complete amnesia for the entire sequence. Miss [whited out] was again handed the gun, which she refused (in an awakened state) to pick up or accept form the operator. She expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened.” P. 36, 37

MKULTRA was divided into 149 Subprojects. One group of Subprojects involved the development and testing of mind control drugs. The goal of these Subprojects was to identify compounds which would assist in interrogation and in the creation of amnesia. The CIA sponsored LSD research through MKULTRA. It also financed LSD conferences and books. An undated document entitled “D-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LDS-25),” states “Some of the more outstanding effects are the mental confusion, helplessness, and extreme anxiety which are produced by minute doses of this substance. Based upon these reactions, its potential use in offensive psychological warfare and in interrogation is considerable, and it may become one of the most important of the psychochemical agents.” P. 47, 51, 54, 73

Unethical practice by physicians and the direct involvement of pharmaceutical companies are part of the history of hallucinogens. Under TOP SECRET clearance, Eli Lilly Company was given a $400,000 grant in 1953 to manufacture and supply LSD to the CIA. Army LSD research was ongoing in 1977 when LSD was a controlled substance. At least 1,500 soldiers were given LSD without informed consent as part of Army mind control experiments. These facts have never been subject to ethical review or any policy or position statement by any medical organization. P. 52, 53, 68, 73

Frank Olson was a Fort Detrick biological warfare expert who committed suicide in 1953 after being given LSD hidden in liqueur by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Director of MKULTRA. Olson’s family determined that he had committed suicide subsequent to a bad LSD trip only after reading Nelson Rockefeller’s 1975 report on the CIA, published 22 years after Olsen’s death. They were given $750,000 in compensation by Congress. P. 49

Biological warfare (BW) and chemical warfare (CW) research involved testing in many locations. CW research involved releasing bacteria and viruses into general population areas. The bacterium Serratia marascens was released in New York (June 1966), San Francisco (September 1950), and Pennsylvania (January 1955). A paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine describes eleven Serratia marascens infections observed in one San Francisco hospital between September 1950 and February 1951. The paper was published because Serratia marascens infections are very rare. P. 68, 69

MKULTRA Subproject 35 involved funding the construction of the Gorman Annex at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. The total budget for the Annex of $1.25 million was to provide a hospital safe house for mind control research. One sixth of the space was set aside for the CIA, which placed three biochemists there under cover. P. 55

Another group of Subprojects consists of experiments and research on non-chemical mind control. This group of Subprojects is about one quarter of the total MKULTRA Subprojects. It involves most of the contractors with unwitting status. Unwitting contractors are ones who do not realize that the research money is from the CIA because it has been funneled through a cutout or front organization. By and large, the psychologists and sociologists were unwitting contractors, while the physicians, chemists, and the biologists had TOP SECRET clearance and were aware that they were working for the CIA. In CIA terminology, these people were witting. P. 54

Like the Tuskeegee Syphilis Study and the radiation research, MKULTRA involved direct experimentation on children without informed consent being given by their parents or guardians. In the case of the Tuskeegee Study, children were harmed by preventable congenital syphilis. In the radiation experiments, they were harmed through direct expose after birth or in utero exposure during experiments on their mothers. [25] Four of the MKULTRA Subprojects involved research on children. The deliberate creation of multiple personality in children is an explicitly stated plan in the MKULTRA Subproject Proposal submitted for funding on May 30, 1961. P. 56, 61

The Mind Control Doctors – Dr. Ewen Cameron

Throughout the 20th century, academic psychiatry provided no public commentary, ethical guidance, or moral oversight of any kind concerning mind control experimentation, despite the fact that the leading psychiatrists and medical schools were well funded by the CIA and military for mind control research. Mental patients, cancer patients, prisoners, and unwitting citizens were experimented on by mind control doctors at Yale, Harvard, McGill, Stanford, UCLA, and other major universities. These human guinea pigs were never told that they were subjects in military and CIA mind control experiments, and they never gave informed consent. They received no systematic follow-up to document the harm done to them. The welfare of the “human subjects” was not a relevant variable in the academic equation.” The mind control doctors saw their patients as biological machines, a view which made them sub-human, and therefore easier to abuse in mind control experiments. P. 91, 126

The MKULTRA contractor about whom the most has been written is Dr. Ewen Cameron. [26][27][28][29][30][31][32] Dr. Cameron began conducting unethical and inhumane brainwashing experiments at Brandon mental Hospital in the 1930’s. Schizophrenic patients were forced to lie naked in red light for eight hours a day for periods as long as eight months. Another experiment involved overheating patients in an electric cage until their body temperatures reached 102 degrees. Dr. Cameron massively over-utilized coma therapy by putting patients in coma for 2 to 5 hours per day for up to 50 days in a row. At various times, Dr. Cameron was President of the Quebec, Canadian, American, and World Psychiatric Associations. He was one of four co-founders of the World Psychiatric Association. P. 125-129

In a paper published in the American Journal of Psychiatry entitled “Psychic Driving,” Dr. Cameron [33] describes his brainwashing techniques. Psychic driving was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, patients were depatterned, which meant reduced to a vegetable state through a combination of massive amounts of electroconvulsive shock, drug-induced sleep and sensory isolation. When fully depatterned, patients were incontinent of urine and feces, unable to feed themselves, and unable to state their name, location, or the date. In the second stage, psychic driving was introduced. This consisted of hundreds of hours of tape loops being played to the patient through earphones, special helmets, or speakers in the sensory isolation room. Dr. Cameron received a grant from Canada’s Department of Health and Welfare for $57,750 for the years 1961 to 1964 for “A Study of Factors Which Promote or Retard Personality Change in Individuals Exposed to Prolonged Repetition of Verbal Signals.” P. 129, 131

Linda MacDonald was a victim of Dr. Ewen Cameron’s unethical, destructive mind control experiments between May 1 and September 12, 1963. Dr. Cameron used a “treatment” which involved intensive application of three brainwashing techniques; drug disinhibition, prolonged sleep treatment, and prolonged psychological isolation. These were combined with ECT [Electro Convulsive Therapy] treatments. The amount of electricity introduced into Linda’s brain exceeded by 76.5 times the maximum amount recommended in the ECT Guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Cameron proved that doctors skilled in the right procedures can erase a subject’s memory. His depattering technique resulted in permanent and complete amnesia. To this day, Linda MacDonald is unable to remember anything from her birth to 1963. As recorded by nurses in her chart, Linda was reduced to a vegetable state by depatterning. She was completely disoriented. She didn’t know her name, age or where she was. She didn’t recognize her children. She couldn’t read, drive, cook, or use a toilet. Not only did she not know her husband, she didn’t even know what a husband was. P. 181-183

There is a connection to politics, power, and weapons in Linda MacDonald’s life. Her husband worked for the Canadian Armament Research Development Establishment. His immediate boss was a man who sold arms to Saddam Hussein. His boss was also tied into the Iran-Contra affair, and was murdered in Europe a few years ago. P. 186

Life changed for Linda when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program, The Fifth Estate, aired a segment on Dr. Cameron on January 17, 1984. A Vancouver newspaper ran a full-page story on Robert Loggie, a Vancouver man who had been experimented on by Dr. Cameron. Loggie was a plaintiff in the class action suit against the CIA for Dr. Cameron’s MKULTRA experiments, which was settled out of court for $750,000, divided among the eight plaintiffs. Linda’s mother phoned her about the program. Linda shook a lot in reaction to the news and didn’t know what to do. Through a reporter she got in touch with a Washington lawyer representing the eight Canadian plaintiffs. He advised Linda that she could not be a party to the class action suit against the CIA because she was ‘treated’ by Dr. Cameron after his CIA funding had stopped. The Canadian government had picked up the funding by 1963. Eventually she got $100,000 plus legal fees from the Canadian government. P. 187, 188

The fact that Dr. Cameron’s unethical, inhumane, and grossly damaging experiments were published in the psychiatric literature [34][35][36] is a condemnation of the editorial standards of the journals, not a vindication of Dr. Cameron. P. 132

Dr. G. H. Estabrooks

G.H. Estabrooks is the only mind control doctor who has publicly acknowledged the building of Manchurian Candidates. In his book Spiritism, [37] Dr. Estabrooks describes experiments done to create multiple personality by military psychiatrist Dr. P.L. Harriman. [38][39][40] In his book Hypnotism, [41] Dr. Estabrooks states that the creation of experimental multiple personality for operational use in military subjects, whom he refers to as super spies, is ethical because of the demands of war. He comments in a chapter entitled “Hypnotism in Warfare” that: “the hand of the military must not be tied by any silly prejudices in the minds of the general public. War is the end of all law. In the last analysis any device is justifiable which enables us to protect ourselves from defeat.” P. 159, 162

In a May 13, 1968 article in the Providence Evening Bulletin, [42] Estabrooks is described as a former consultant for the FBI and CIA, and is quoted as saying that, “the key to creating an effective spy or assassin rests in splitting a man’s personality, or creating multipersonality, with the aid of hypnotism. This is not science fiction. This has and is being done. I have done it.” P. 162

Dr. Estabrooks’ proposal to the CIA dated June 22, 1954 states: “In deep hypnosis the subject, military or civilian, can be given a message to be delivered to say Colonel X in Berlin. The message will be perfectly safe and delivered to the proper person because the subject will have no memory whatsoever in the waking state as to the message. It can be arranged that the subject will have no knowledge of ever having been hypnotized. It can be arranged that no one beside Colonel X in Berlin can hypnotize the subject and recover the message….I will take a number of men and will establish in them through the use of hypnotism the condition of split personality. Consciously they will be ardent Communists, fanatical adherents to the party line. Unconsciously they will be loyal Americans determined to thwart the Communists at every turn. These men will have no knowledge of ever having been hypnotized, and can only be hypnotized by such persons as the original operator may choose. Consciously they will associate with the Communists and learn all their plans. Once every month they, as loyal Americans, will tell what they know. This sounds unbelievable, but I assure you, it will work.” P. 163, 165

In a 1971 article in Science Digest, Dr. Estabrooks [43] claimed to have created hypnotic couriers and counterintelligence agents for operational use: “The ‘hypnotic courier’ provides a unique solution. I was involved in preparing army subjects for this work during World War II. One successful case involved an Army Captain. He was an excellent subject but did not realize it. I removed from him, by post hypnotic suggestion, all recollection of ever having been hypnotized. I put him under deep hypnosis, and gave him – orally – a vital message to be delivered directly on his arrival in Japan to a certain colonel – let’s say his name was Brown – of military intelligence. Outside of myself, Colonel Brown was the only person who could hypnotize Captain Smith. This is ‘locking.’ I performed it by saying to the captain, ‘We will use the phrase ‘the moon is clear. Whenever you hear this phrase from Brown or myself you will pass instantly into deep hypnosis.’ When Captain Smith re-awakened, he had no conscious memory of what happened in trance. The system is virtually foolproof.” P. 167, 168

By the 1920’s not only had [clinical hypnotists] learned to apply posthypnotic suggestion, but also had learned to split certain complex individuals into multiple personalities like Jeckyl-Hydes. During World War II, I worked this technique with a vulnerable Marine lieutenant I’ll call Jones. I split his personality into Jones A and Jones B. Jones A, once a “normal” working Marine, became entirely different. He talked communist doctrine and meant it. He was welcomed enthusiastically by communist cells, and was deliberately given a dishonorable discharge by the Corps and became a card-carrying party member. Jones B was the deeper personality, knew all the thoughts of Jones A, was a loyal American and was “imprinted” to say nothing during conscious phases. All I had to do was hypnotize the whole man, get in touch with Jones B, the loyal American, and I had a pipeline straight into the Communist camp. It worked beautifully for months.” P. 169

Dr. Estabrooks did experiments on children. He corresponded with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover about using hypnosis to interrogate juvenile delinquents. His experimentation on children raises the possibility that investigators have attempted to create Manchurian Candidates in children. Such a possibility might seem far-fetched until one considers the LSD, biological and radiation experiments conducted on children, the fact that four MKULTRA Subprojects were on children, and that hypnotic subjects described in the CIA documents include girls 19 years of age. P. 176, 177

Other Mind Control Doctors

Dr. Harold Wolff, a Professor of Medicine at Cornell, was a director of the CIA cutout [front organization], The Human Ecology Foundation, and the investigator of MKULTRA Subproject 61. Dr. Wolff’s accomplishments include being President of the American Neurological Association and editor of Archives of Neurology. [44] P. 85

Dr. Martin Orne [45][46] is one of the leading experts on hypnosis of the 20th century. For about 30 years, he was the editor of The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. He is one of two psychiatrists professionally active into the late 1990’s who is a documented CIA mind control contractor, along with Dr. Louis Jolyon West. [47] Dr. West, who killed an elephant with LSD [48] at Oklahoma City Zoo, had TOP SECRET clearance with the CIA and the military. P. 81, 121, 124

Dr. William Sweet [49] participated in both brain electrode implant experiments and the injection of uranium into medical patients at Harvard University. The 925-page Final Report. Advisory Committee on Human radiation Experiments tells the story of the radiation experiments, and their linkage to mind control. [50] P. 1

Brain Implants

A CIA memorandum for MKULTRA Subproject 142 describes the control of animals through stimulation of brain electrodes. The overall goal was clear; to control the mind and behavior, and to create dissociation through a combination of drugs, sensory isolation, hypnosis, brain electrode implants, electric shock, and beaming different kinds of energy at the brain. The ability to create limited, controlled amnesia through a variety of methods was a primary goal of the mind control programs. P. 87

Brain electrode experiments were also conducted in humans. Dr. Jose Delgado, [51][52][53][54][55][56][57] a neurosurgeon and professor at Yale, received funding for brain electrode research on children and adults. He was able to control the movements of his animal and human subjects by pushing buttons on a remote transmitter box. In one paper, Dr. Delgado describes the cats as “mechanical toys.” An 11-year old boy underwent a partial change of identity upon remote stimulation of his brain electrode: [58] “Electrical stimulation of the superior temporal convolution induced feminine striving and confusion about his own sexual identity. For example, the patient, an 11-year old boy, said, ‘I was thinking whether I was a boy or a girl, which one I’d like to be,’ and ‘I’d like to be a girl.’ After one of the stimulations the patient suddenly began to discuss his desire to get married to the male interviewer. Temporal-lobe stimulation produced in another patient open manifestations and declarations of pleasure, accompanied by giggles and joking with the therapist. In two adult female patients stimulation of the same region was followed by discussion of marriage and expression of a wish to marry the therapist. P. 87-89

Brain electrode research was also conducted independently at Harvard by Dr. Delgado’s coauthors, Drs. Vernon Mark, Frank Ervin, and William Sweet. Mark and Ervin describe implanting brain electrodes in a large number of patients at Harvard hospitals. A patient named Jennie was 14 years old when they put electrodes in her brain. In Mark and Ervin’s Violence and the Brain, [59] photographs show 18-year old Julia smiling, angry, or pounding the wall depending on which button is being pushed on the transmitter box sending signals to her brain electrodes. P. 89-91

Dr. Heath, [60][61][62] Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane University, placed brain electrodes in a young homosexual man and fitted him with a box. A button on the box could be used to electrically stimulate an electrode implanted in the septal region of his brain, a pleasure center. During one three-our period, the patient, referred to as B-19, stimulated himself 1,500 times. [63] “During these sessions, B-19 stimulated himself to a point that he was experiencing an almost overwhelming euphoria and elation, and had to be disconnected, despite his vigorous protests. P. 94

Non-lethal Weapons

Non-lethal weapons is a broad category which includes devices for beaming various kinds of energy at human targets in order to temporarily incapacitate them, or to control or affect their behavior. Non-lethal weapons research has been conducted at universities in the US on contract to the CIA, and has overlapped with research on hallucinogens and brain electrode implants. Funding of the experiments began in MKULTRA. P. 103

Subproject 62 documents “certain kinds of radio frequency energy have been found to effect reversible neurological changes in chimpanzees.” Subproject 54 was studying how to produce concussions from a distance using mechanical blast waves propagated through the air. The contractor says that such a concussion “is always followed by amnesia for the actual moment of the accident.” He also states: “The blast duration would be in the order of a tenth of a second. Masking of a noise of this duration should not be difficult. It would be advantageous to establish the effectiveness of both of the above methods as a tool in brain-wash therapy.” P. 104, 105

MKULTRA Subproject 119 was a literature review which included a summary of existing information on “Techniques of activation of the human organism by remote electronic means.” According to a report in Defense Electronics, [64] consideration was given to using non-lethal weapons technology on David Koresh during the Branch Davidian siege in the spring of 1993. P. 105

Research on the ability of magnetic fields to facilitate the creation of false memories and altered states of consciousness is apparently funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency through the project cryptonym SLEEPING BEAUTY. “Sleeping Beauty was a Defense Department study of remote microwave min-influencing techniques.” [65] P. 116

There is abundant evidence in the public domain [66] that non-lethal weapons research is ongoing and funded annually in the tens of millions of dollars, or more. Given the fact that chemical and biological weapons, mind control drugs and radiation have been tested on unwitting civilian populations, it is possible that non-lethal weapons have also been tested on unwitting civilians. P 106.

A memorandum from Richard Helms, [67] Acting Deputy Director to Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA dated 3 April 1953 and entitled “Two Extremely Sensitive Research Programs” (MKULTRA and MKDELTA) includes the statement, “Even internally in CIA, as few individuals as possible should be aware of our interest in these fields and of the identity of those who are working for us. At present this results in ridiculous contracts, often with cut-outs [front organizations], which do not spell out the scope or intent of the work. Complete Government audits of such contracts are impossible for the same reason.” P. 125

To order Bluebird, and to get more information on mind control and other major cover-ups, see our Resource List. For other reliable resources on mind control, visit our mind control information center. We share this information as an invitation to work together for a better world. By inspiring others to join us in spreading the word, we can create a critical mass of people who demand that all of these activities be brought back under Congressional control.

[3] Hunt, L. Secret Agenda. The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. To order this book, click here.

[4] Simpson, C. Blowback. The First Full Account of America’s Recruitment of Nazis, and the Disastrous Effect on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988. To order this book, click here.

[5] Simpson, C. The Splendid Blonde Beast. Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. New York: Grove Press, 1993. To order this book, click here.

[10] Faden, R.R. Final Report. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1995. The full report is available on the Department of Energy Website at: http://www.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/achre/index.html.

[14] Marks, J. The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988. To order this book, click here.

[15] CIA MORI ID 190684, pp. 1, 4. This is a declassified CIA document dealing with mind control. To verify the statement in the text, use the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request as described on our ten-page mind control summary at http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrol10pg#ciadocs. You should receive the government mind control CDs within a month of your request. Once you receive them, look up the MORI ID number listed. For free, unlimited access to these documents, go to the Black Vault Government Archive at http://www.bvalphaserver.com/content-21.html. To go directly to the CIA document quoted, for page 1, click here. For page 4, click here.

[16] CIA MORI ID 190527, pp. 1, 2. This is a declassified CIA document dealing with mind control. To verify the statement in the text, use the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request as described on our ten-page mind control summary at http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrol10pg#ciadocs. You should receive the government mind control CDs within a month of your request. Once you receive them, look up the MORI ID number listed. For free, unlimited access to these documents, go to the Black Vault Government Archive at http://www.bvalphaserver.com/content-21.html. To go directly to the above document, for page 1, click here. For page 2, click here.

[17] Bowart, W. Operation Mind Control. New York: W.W. Norton, 1978

[18] Collins, A. In the Sleep Room. The Story of CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1988/1998. To order this book, click here.

[23] Thomas, G. Journey into Madness. The Secret Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse. New York: Bantam, 1989 (paperback 1990). To order this book, click here.

[24] CIA MORI ID 190691, p. 1. This is a declassified CIA document dealing with mind control. To verify the statement in the text, use the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request as described on our ten-page mind control summary at http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrol10pg#ciadocs. You should receive the government mind control CDs within a month of your request. Once you receive them, look up the MORI ID number listed. For free, unlimited access to these documents, go to the Black Vault Government Archive at http://www.bvalphaserver.com/content-21.html. To go directly to the page with the CIA document quoted, click here.

[25] Faden, R.R. Final Report. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1995. The full report is available on the Department of Energy Website at: http://www.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/achre/index.html.

[26] Collins, A. In the Sleep Room. The Story of CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1988/1998. To order this book, click here.

[45] Marks, J. The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988. To order this book, click here.

[46] Orne, M.T. The potential uses of hypnosis in interrogation. In A.D. Biderman (Ed.), The Manipulation of Human Behavior (pp. 169-215). New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1961. To order this book, click here.

[50] Faden, R.R. Final Report. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1995. The full report is available on the Department of Energy Website at: http://www.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/achre/index.html. For the two pages detailing Dr. Sweet's experiments: Chapter five page 4, and page 5.

[67] Memorandum from ADDP Helms to DCI Dulles, dated 3 April 1953, Tab A, pp. 1-2 (p. 30 on CDs), CIA MORI ID 17748. This is a declassified CIA document dealing with mind control. To verify the statement in the text, use the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request as described on our ten-page mind control summary at http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrol10pg#ciadocs. You should receive the government mind control CDs within a month of your request. Once you receive them, look up the MORI ID number listed. For free, unlimited access to these documents, go to the Black Vault Government Archive at http://www.bvalphaserver.com/content-21.html. To go directly to the CIA document quoted (p.30), click here.

The search for the Manchurian Candidate - John Marr investigates the CIA and its mind control research, using drugs, hypnosis - LSD, Magic Mushrooms, heroin and cocaine were all used by CIA researchers from universities across the USA.

Marks begins the story of mind control with the end of WW11. In the concentration camps the Nazis had made experiments on human beings with the fickle exc use to determine how much pain a man could withstand. After WW11, the OSS, later to be renamed the CIA, transferred many German Nazi scientists to the USA where they were literally "lifted and led', - the were given the freedom to continue their "reserarch" with the backing of the the US government. During the Korean war, the Korean and the KGB intelligence services used forms of mind control techniques on captured US combatants, which impressed and shocked top CIA personel.They then began a period of research into mind control which would start from the time of the Korean War and has never ended.

The prime interest in this research was to determine if a man could be mind controlled to kill and then forget why he had done so - in effect -"A Manchurian Candidate" , named after the film by the same name, in which Frank Sinatra played the leading role.

The Franklin Cover-up, child abuse, Satanism and murder in Nebraska by John DeCamp =
reviewed on Amazon UK
Reviewer: A reader from USA

I helped investigative this case and, unfortunately, everything in the book is true. I hope that someday justice will be done. For now, however, those of us whose lives were involved in the investigation of this case will still have to accept that,"'They were too big, and we were too small."

The Kincora Scandal by Chris Moore - Belfast journalist who worked for the BBC

Possibly the first serious investigation into the peadophile scandal at Kincora Home in Belfast, where dissaffected and orphaned children were sent. There are several interesting sections regarding the three main protagonists, William McGrath, Joe Mains and Raymond Semple , all in positions of power at the Kincora home. Moore describes McGraths links with the UVF, the notorious John McKeague and the intreaguing "man from the (UK Ministry of Defense - MI5 ) ministry". Curiously Moore makes no mention of Colin Wallace , an Ulsterman who worked for the UK "psyops" section of MI5.

As far as I am concerned, the most interesting parts in the book rerlates to McGraths ties with Ulsters landed gentry, eg: Sir Knox Cunningham who provided McGrath with funds for the TARA "organisation. Cunningham was an associate of the infamous Cambridge clique, which included Sir Anthony Blunt, the well known homosexual and a member of the Cambridge Soviet spy ring.

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

FBI agents would never assassinate a President or Civil Rights leader, would they? Then what do FBI agents do with our tax dollars?

Edward Rodgers was in charge of investigating cases of Child Abuse at the FBI

Two daughters of former state and federal law enforcement official Edward Rodgers were awarded $2.319,400 yesterday, after a Denver judge and jury found that the women suffered years of abuse at the hands of their father.

The award to Sharon Simone, 45, and Susan Hammond, 44, followed testimony of Rodgers’ four daughters in person or through depositions, describing repeated physical abuse and sexual assaults by their father from 1944 through 1965.

Rodgers, 72, who became a child abuse expert after retiring from the FBI and joining the colorado Springs DA’s office, failed to appear for the trial. But in a deposition taken in March, Rodgers denied ever hitting or sexually abusing his children.

He admitted that he thought of himself as a "domineering s.o.b. who demanded strict responses from my children, strict obedience." But it never approached child abuse, Rodgers said. "Did I make mistakes? Damn right I did, just like any other father or mother..."

Thomas Gresham, Rodger’s former attorney, withdrew from the case recently after being unable to locate his client. Rodgers recently contacted one of his sons from a Texas town along the Mexican border. Gresham said his last contact with Rodgers was on April 24.

The sisters reacted quietly to the verdict, and with relief that their stories of abuse had finally been told.

"I feel really good that I’ve gone public with this,"Hammond said. "I am a victim, the shame isn’t mine, the horror happened to me. I’m not bad.
"My father did shameful and horrible things to me and my brothers and sisters. I don’t believe he is a shameful and horrible man, but he has to be held accountable," Hammond added.

The lawsuit deeply divided the Rodgers family, with Rodgers’ three sons questioning their sister’s motives.

Immediately after the verdict, son Steve Rodgers, 37, reacted angrily, yelling at his sisters in the courtroom.

Later, Rodgers said he loves his father and stands by him. He said his sisters had told him their father had to be exposed the way Nazi war criminals have been exposed.

"In a way I’m angry with my father for not being here. But I’m sympathetic because he would have walked into a gross crucifixion," Rodgers said.

Steve Rodgers never denied that he and his siblings were physically abused, but disputed that his father molested his sisters.
Before the jury’s award, Denver District Judge William Meyer found that Rodger’s conduct toward Simone and Hammond was negligent and "outrageous."

Despite the length of time since the abuse, the jury determined the sisters could legally bring the suit. The statute of limitations for a civil suit is two years, but jurors determined that the sisters became aware of he nature and extent of their injury only within the last two years, during therapy.

The jury then determined the damages, finding $1,240,000 for Simone and 1,079,000 for Hammond.

The sisters had alleged in their suit filed last July that Rodgers subjected his seven children to a "pattern of emotional, physical, sexual and incestual abuse."

As a result of the abuse, the women claimed their emotional lives had been left in a shambles, requiring extensive therapy for both and repeated hospitalizations of Hammond, who was acutely suicidal. Simone developed obsessive behavior and became so unable to function she resigned a position with a Boston-based college.

Despite the judgment yesterday, Rodgers cannot be criminally charged. the statue of limitations in Colorado for sexual assault on children is 10 years.
Rodgers, who worked for the FBI for 27 years, much of it in Denver, became chief investigator for the district attorney’s office in Colorado Sp;rings. during his employment at the DA’s office from 1967 until 1983, he became a well-known figure in Colorado Springs, and lectured and wrote about child abuse both locally and nationwide.

He wrote a manual called " A Compendium -- Child Abuse by the National College of District Attorney’s," and helped put together manuals on child abuse for the New York state police and a national child abuse center.

Ex-FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Child Abuse

Tuesday February 17, 2004 11:46 PM

By JOHN SOLOMON

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The former chief internal watchdog at the FBI has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl and has admitted he had a history of molesting other children before he joined the bureau for what became a two-decade career.

John H. Conditt Jr., 53, who retired in 2001, was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison in Tarrant County court in Fort Worth, Texas, after he admitted he molested the daughter of two FBI agents after he retired. He acknowledged molesting at least two other girls before he began his law enforcement career, his lawyer said.

Conditt sought treatment for sex offenders after his arrest last year, said his attorney, Toby Goldsmith.

``The problem these people have is they don't really feel like it is their fault,'' Goldsmith said. ``The treatment doesn't work unless you admit you are the one who instigated it, and he did that.''

Conditt headed the internal affairs unit that investigates agent wrongdoing for the Office of Professional Responsibility at FBI headquarters in Washington from 1999 until his retirement in June 2001, the FBI said. He wrote articles in law enforcement journals on how police agencies could effectively investigate their own conduct.

FBI officials said Tuesday they had no information to suggest that Conditt had any problems during his career and he was never the subject of an investigation.

Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Mitch Poe, who prosecuted the case, said he wanted a longer prison sentence and was skeptical of Conditt's claim that his molestation of children subsided during his FBI career.

``Both myself and the judge in open court, we were kind of skeptical but we don't have any evidence,'' Poe said.

A recently retired FBI whistleblower who brought allegations to Conditt's office that agents had not aggressively pursued evidence of sexual abuse in Indian country said Tuesday she now questions whether his personal history affected that decision.

``Before, it never made any sense,'' retired agent Jane Turner said of the FBI's decision to decline to further investigate her allegations. ``Now I can understand. Why in the world wouldn't you want to investigate that?''

Goldsmith said he was concerned about the safety of his client in prison given that he is a former FBI agent and an admitted child molester. ``He's not going to be comfortable in the penitentiary,'' the lawyer said.

Goldsmith said his client had admitted that he had molested at least two other girls before he became an FBI agent more than 30 years ago, but that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing while he served in the bureau.

``It seems that he never did because he had stricter control at that time,'' the lawyer said.

Conditt could have faced life in prison, and prosecutors requested he get 50 years. The judge sentenced him to 12 years in prison, in part citing Conditt's decision to spare the victim the trauma of a trial, Goldsmith said.

Conditt's conviction is the latest controversy to strike the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility.

Last year, FBI Director Robert Mueller transferred the head of the office to another supervisory assignment outside Washington, three months after rebuking him for his conduct toward a whistleblower.

That whistleblower, John Roberts, alleged the FBI disciplinary office had a double standard that let supervisors off easier than rank-and-file agents.

Those allegations prompted investigations by Congress and the Justice Department inspector general. The inspector general concluded that there was no systematic favoritism of senior managers over rank-and-file employees but that there was a double standard in some cases involving crude sexual jokes and remarks

BOISE, Idaho (AP) A longtime FBI agent who helped arrest mountain-man Claude Dallas and was involved in a deadly 1984 siege involving white supremacists in Washington state is going to prison for 12 months after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography.

William Buie, 64, of Boise, most recently worked as an investigator for the Idaho attorney general's office.

He was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to a year in prison on one count of possession of sexually exploitative materials involving minors. He had pleaded guilty in March.

Buie told agents with the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force that he learned to access child pornography Web sites while attending a seminar on preventing child exploitation as part of his law enforcement training in 2000 or 2001.

He acknowledged using his bank debit card to gain access to child erotica and child pornography Web sites, including using the card to buy a month of access to a child pornography Internet site entitled ''Eternal Nymphets.''

Buie, a former FBI sniper who worked for about 30 years for the agency in Seattle, Butte, Mont., and Salt Lake City, participated in the arrest of Dallas in 1982 in Paradise Valley, Nev., after the self-proclaimed mountain man had spent a year on the run after killing two Idaho Fish and Game agents. Dallas served 22 years in prison for manslaughter.

Buie also took part in the 1984 siege on Whidbey Island, Wash. in which Robert Mathews, leader of the violent racist cell called ``The Order,'' was killed following an 18-month wave of armed robberies and assassinations.

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge gave Buie a reduced sentence of just a year behind bars, down from the standard sentencing range of 27 months to 33 months. That's after his lawyer, Mark Manweiler, argued that Buie's efforts to find sex-addiction treatment and his exemplary work record as well as concern that as a longtime FBI agent he would be in danger behind bars entitled him to a sentencing break.

"He would be unusually susceptible to abuse in a federal correctional institution,'' Manweiler wrote in his motion.

In a statement, the Justice Department said that as many as 150 sexually explicit images depicting children were found on Buie's home computers. It said no images were found on Buie's work computer.

After leaving the FBI, he worked as a criminal investigator for the Idaho attorney general's office for about six years, according to court documents.

According to terms of his sentencing, Buie must turn himself in on July 20 to begin serving his federal prison term.

Phone messages left by the Associated Press late Monday at Buie's Boise residence and on his cell phone weren't immediately returned.

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

additional information when at campusactivism.org
once in the forum scroll down to FBI WATCH

also google these words together

dallas news forum FBI WATCH

also google these words together

nichols potts trentadue

also

floyd anticev fbi

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

Parenti, Michael. DIRTY TRUTHS. City Lights Books, 1996.
Dr. Parenti looks at F.B.I. involvement in the assassination of labor leader Walter Reuther while he was organizing protests against the Vietnam War. It includes the essay “Why the Left is Afraid to look at the Assassination of JFK”.

Pepper, William. ORDERS TO KILL. Carroll and Graf, 1995.
Attorney Pepper represented James Earl Ray in his bid for a new trial and won a landmark case in civil court in December 1999 for the Martin Luther King Jr. family. The jury in the case concluded hat the F.B.I. was involved in the assassination of King. His book details our government’s involvement and provides photographic evidence of the F.B.I.’s role in this assassination.

Pepper,William. ACT OF STATE: THE EXECUTION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING Verso Press, 2003
The evidence from the 1999 Civil Trial in Memphis brought by the King family in which the jury concluded FBI agents were principal architects in the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Powers, Richard Gid. SECRECY AND POWER. Free Press, 1987.
A biography of J. Edgar Hoover and his quest for power.

Powers, Tyrone. EYES TO MY SOUL. Majority Press, 1996.
Professor Powers an afro-american, talks about his 9 years working as an F.B.I. agent, and the
FBI FRUHMENSCHEN program. White agents tried to kill him when he was writing this book.

Robbins, Natalie. ALIEN INK. William Morrow, 1992.
Ms. Robbins acquired the F.B.I. files on the major writers and artists of the 20th century, and
examines F.B.I. attacks upon them and their freedom of expression.

Schultz, Bud and Ruth. THE PRICE OF DISSENT. University of California Press , 2001
The sequel to IT DID HAPPEN HERE with more interviews with civil rights activists and union
organizers and anti-war protestors who survived FBI assassination attempts and with family members of people who were murdered.

Seymour, Sheri. COMMITTEE OF THE STATES. Self-published, 1989.
The F.B.I. infiltrated the California Militia 10 years before the Oklahoma City bombing. The
book illustrates how easy it was for the F.B.I. to infiltrate the group and get it to make bombs.
Shows with child-like simplicity how easy it was for FBI agent provocteur to get Timothy McVeigh
to make bomb and drive the truck.

Sharkey, Joe. ABOVE SUSPICION. Simon & Schuster, 1993.
Looks at the F.B.I. coverup involving one of its own agents who murdered an informant after he got her pregnant.

Suarez, Manuel. REQUIEM ON CERRO MARAVILLA. Waterfront Press, 1987.
Looks at F.B.I. collaboration with local police in the arrest, handcuffing, and death squad execution of two teenagers in Puerto Rico.

Summers, Anthony. OFFICIAL AND CONFIDENTIAL. G.B. Putnam and Sons, 1993.
This is the book on which the PBS Frontline documentary on J. Edgar Hoover and his friendship
with the Mafia is based.

Theoharis, Athan. THE F.B.I. Garland Publishers, 1994.
Professor Theoharis has compiled a comprehensive listing of books and articles about the F.B.I. up to 1994.

Thomas, Kenn. THE OCTOPUS. Feral House, 1996.
Investigates the F.B.I.’s role in the killing of investigative reporter Danny Casolero while he was
investigating the October Surprise.

Turner, William. THE ASSASSINATION OF ROBERT KENNEDY. Thunder Mouth Press, 1993.
Written by a former F.B.I. agent, it looks at the F.B.I.’s involvement in the assassination of Robert
Kennedy.

Turner, William. REARVIEW MIRROR foreword by Oliver Stone. Penmarin Books CA 2001.
More updated information on FBI involvement in President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin
Luther King Assassination written by a former FBI agent.

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. WHO IS GUARDING THE GUARDIANS? A Report on Police
Death Squad activities. 1981.

Wiener, Jon. GIMME SOME TRUTH. University of California Press, 1999.
Professor Wiener looks at the 14 year battle with the F.B.I. to get them to release their files on
John Lennon.

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

Hougan, Jim. SPOOKS. William Morrow, 1978.
Important book detailing the life of former F.B.I. agent Robert Maheux and his relationship with the Mafia. Groundbreaking book in understanding FBI collaboration with the Mafia, using it to carry out assassinations on President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and others. See author Bud Schultz

Kaiser, Marty . Odyssey of an Eavesdropper( My Life in electronic countermeasures and my battle against the FBI) W Carroll & Graf 2005
Author exposes wiretapping crimes committed by FBI agents as well as Business Fraud. He built the wiretapping devices for FBI agents that were later used in crimes committed against people like Martin Luther King and public officials.After exposing FBI agents kickback schemes to Congress the author became a target of retaliation by tax payer funded FBI agents.

Kelly, John F. TAINTING EVIDENCE. The Free Press 1998. The book is based on testimony of FBI lab Whistleblower Dr. Frederick Whitehurst , an employee of the FBI for 17 years. Shows how bad the FBI Lab is run. Dr. Whitehurst was the chemist who analyzed Timothy McVeigh's clothes for traces of ammonium nitrate and was removed from the case when he did not find any bomb residue.

Lehr, Dick & O'Neill, Gerard. BLACK MASS. Public Affairs, 2000.
Looks at the FBI's collaboration in Boston with the Mafia and Irish Mob between 1960 and 2001 in which they collaborated in the murder of 21 women,children and men. Important book showing how the FBI uses the Mafia to commit political and other assassinations .

Melanson, Phillip. THE MURKIN CONSPIRACY. Praeger, 1989.
Professor Melanson looks at the F.B.I.’s role in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Melanson, Phillip. THE ROBERT KENNEDY ASSASSINATION. Shapolsky, 1991.
Professor Melanson is in charge of the Robert Kennedy archives at the University of Massachusetts.
He details the F.B.I.’s role as one of the principal architects of the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Messerschmidt, Jim. THE TRIAL OF LEONARD PELTIER. South End Press, 1983.
Looks at the miscarriage of justice in the F.B.I.’s handling of the Leonard Peltier case.

Oklahoma City Bombing Investigative Committee. THE FINAL REPORT.2001. The best book by far
providing overwhelming evidence of FBI involvement in the Oklahoma City Bombing .

Navasky, Victor. INVESTIGATING THE F.B.I. Doubleday, 1973.
Contains material presented at a major conference at Princeton University in 1971 investigating
crimes committed by the FBI.

Neff, James. MOBBED UP. Dell Publishers 1988.
Important book in understanding FBI collaboration with the Mafia especially how the Bureau
uses the Mafia to carry out its political assassinations.

Olsen, Jack. LAST MAN STANDING: THE TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH OF GERONIMO PRATT.
Doubleday, 2000.
Provides supporting evidence for the idea of the F.B.I. as a death squad. Examines the F.B.I. acts of genocide against Afro-Americans . Looks at how FBI agents framed Geronimo Pratt, a Afro American Viet-nam vet who spent over 25 years in prison before a judge released him saying he was innocent and framed by FBI agents.

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

Bari, Judi. TIMBER WARS. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1994.
The F.B.I. attempted to stop the political activity of Judi Bari and Daryl Cherney by exploding a
bomb under their car. Daryl Cherney and Judi Bari filed a Civil lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland police. A jury awarded them $4.4 million dollars in 2003. see www.judibari.org

Bowen Roger. INNOCENCE IS NOT ENOUGH: The Life and Death of Herbert Norman
New York USA M.E. Sharpe Inc 1988
Looks at FBI murder of Herbert Norman, Canadian Ambassador to Egypt.

Burnham, David. ABOVE THE LAW. Scribner, 1996.
Looks at secret deals and fixing of cases by the Justice Department.

Buttino, Frank. A SPECIAL AGENT. William Morrow, 1993.
Investigates F.B.I. attacks on gay agents during the 1980’s.

Carson, Clayborne. MALCOLM X: THE F.B.I. FILE. Carroll & Graf, 1991.
Looks at the role of the F.B.I. in the assassination of Malcolm X.

Cashill,Jack, Sanders,James. FIRST STRIKE Thomas Nelson Press, 2003
Overwhelming evidence presented by Dr. Cashill on the downing of TWA Flight 800
by a missle over Long Island and the ensuing cover-up by FBI agents.

Charns, Alexander. CLOAK AND GAVEL. University of Illinois Press. 1992.
After reviewing thousands of pages of FBI documents the attorney author
exposes the FBI illegal phone tapping of the Supreme Court and how the FBI fix court
cases and manipulate Congress and State legislatures.

Churchill, Ward. AGENTS OF REPRESSION. South End Press, 1988.
Professor Churchill gives first hand accounts of F.B.I. death squad activities.

Churchill, Ward. THE COINTELPRO PAPERS. South End Press, 1990.
Explores how the F.B.I. disrupts legitimate political activities and engage in Death Squad activities.

Criley, Richard. THE F.B.I. VS. THE FIRST AMENDMENT. First Amendment Foundation, 1990.
Looks at the destruction of the First Amendment by the F.B.I.

Davis, John. MAFIA KINGFISH: CARLOS MARCELLO AND THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F.
KENNEDY. McGraw-Hill, 1989.
Pivotal book in understanding how the FBI has uses the Mafia to carry out political and other murders of our political and civil rights leaders.

De Camp, John. THE FRANKLIN COVERUP. AWT Publishers, 1992.
A former Republican state senator from Nebraska writes about a pedophile ring involved in the
kidnaping, sexual torture and murder of children that went all the way to the Bush White House.
Attorney DeCamp discusses the FBI role in the coverup of this case and the murder of a special
prosecutor appointed to investigate the pedophile ring.

Dempsey, James X. and David Cole. TERRORISM AND THE CONSTITUTION: SACRIFICING CIVIL
LIBERTIES IN THE NAME OF NATIONAL SECURITY. Los Angeles, CA: First Amendment
Foundation, 1999. Examines FBI campaign of terror to undermine civil liberties.

Diamond, Sigmund. COMPROMISED CAMPUS. Oxford University Press, 1992.
Professor Diamond attempts to get F.B.I. files showing collaboration between the F.B.I. and colleges
and universities from 1945-1955.

Donner, Frank. PROTECTORS OF PRIVILEGE. University of California Press, 1990.
Looks at collaboration between local police and the F.B.I. to stifle first amendment rights.

Dwyer, James. TWO SECONDS UNDER THE WORLD. Diane publishers 1997.
The most important book you will read on understanding FBI involvement in 9-11
terrorist act at the World Trade Center. This book lays out in detail how the FBI engineered
the first World Trade Center explosion.

Emerson, Steven and Brian Duffy. THE FALL OF PAN AM 103. G.B. Putnam's Sons, 1990.
Oliver Revell was the number 2 man at the F.B.I. until he was demoted by F.B.I. Director
William Sessions to the Dallas Field Office. His son Chris Revell had tickets for
Pan Am 103, but he changed his flight two days before the plane exploded over Lockerbie,
Scotland. See Ross Gelbspan's book, BREAK-INS, DEATH THREATS AND THE FBI to get a
fuller picture of Oliver Revell.

Foerstel, Herbert. SURVEILLANCE IN THE STACKS. Greenwood Press, 1991.
Looks at attempts by the F.B.I. to get librarians to spy on the American public.

Gallagher, Dorothy. ALL THE RIGHT ENEMIES. Penguin Books, 1988.
The F.B.I. utilized the Mafia to carry out its executions against political activists from 1930 through
1970. Carlos Tresca was one of their victims.

Gelbspan, Ross. BREAK- INS, DEATH THREATS, AND THE F.B.I. South End Press, 1991.
This Pulitzer Prize winning reporter formerly with the Boston Globe, details F.B.I. collaboration
with the death squads in El Salvador and their attacks upon American groups opposed to those death
squads.

Glick, Brian. WAR AT HOME. South End Press, 1989.
Attorney Glick details the F.B.I.’s covert war against political activists.

Hoffman, David. THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING AND THE POLITICS OF TERROR. Feral
House, 1998.
Contains detailed evidence about the FBI alliance with the terrorist underworld,
and how FBI agent provocateurs are behind many of the current bombings that have plagued the United States since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some current thinking has FBI agents creating these acts to fill the void caused by the downfall of communism.

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

For the uneducated and the uneducable

a species that hires bodyguards to protect it looses the ability to protect itself and is doomed to extinction.

For readers with short term memory about what governments are capable of doing
to its citizens we only have to remember Hitler and in the news Myanamar(Burma).
Ayton belongs in the same category as Posner, a dis-information specialist.

We brought Attorney Pepper to speak
at Boston College Law school where he was given the Distinguished Alumni Award. He laid out the prima facie evidence for Hoover and other FBI agents "wacking' Dr. King.
as we now know from the FOIA files
obtained from the FBI , agents first sent him "death threat" letters.
For readers who are challenged by
the history of the death squad called the FBI see

CRIMES COMMITTED F.B.I. AGENTS

SUGGESTED READING LIST

Bari, Judi. TIMBER WARS. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1994.
The F.B.I. attempted to stop the political activity of Judi Bari and Daryl Cherney by exploding a
bomb under their car. Daryl Cherney and Judi Bari filed a Civil lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland police. A jury awarded them $4.4 million dollars in 2003. see www.judibari.org

Bowen Roger. INNOCENCE IS NOT ENOUGH: The Life and Death of Herbert Norman
New York USA M.E. Sharpe Inc 1988
Looks at FBI murder of Herbert Norman, Canadian Ambassador to Egypt.

Burnham, David. ABOVE THE LAW. Scribner, 1996.
Looks at secret deals and fixing of cases by the Justice Department.

Buttino, Frank. A SPECIAL AGENT. William Morrow, 1993.
Investigates F.B.I. attacks on gay agents during the 1980’s.

Carson, Clayborne. MALCOLM X: THE F.B.I. FILE. Carroll & Graf, 1991.
Looks at the role of the F.B.I. in the assassination of Malcolm X.

Cashill,Jack, Sanders,James. FIRST STRIKE Thomas Nelson Press, 2003
Overwhelming evidence presented by Dr. Cashill on the downing of TWA Flight 800
by a missle over Long Island and the ensuing cover-up by FBI agents.

Charns, Alexander. CLOAK AND GAVEL. University of Illinois Press. 1992.
After reviewing thousands of pages of FBI documents the attorney author
exposes the FBI illegal phone tapping of the Supreme Court and how the FBI fix court
cases and manipulate Congress and State legislatures.

Churchill, Ward. AGENTS OF REPRESSION. South End Press, 1988.
Professor Churchill gives first hand accounts of F.B.I. death squad activities.

Churchill, Ward. THE COINTELPRO PAPERS. South End Press, 1990.
Explores how the F.B.I. disrupts legitimate political activities and engage in Death Squad activities.

Criley, Richard. THE F.B.I. VS. THE FIRST AMENDMENT. First Amendment Foundation, 1990.
Looks at the destruction of the First Amendment by the F.B.I.

Davis, John. MAFIA KINGFISH: CARLOS MARCELLO AND THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F.
KENNEDY. McGraw-Hill, 1989.
Pivotal book in understanding how the FBI has uses the Mafia to carry out political and other murders of our political and civil rights leaders.

De Camp, John. THE FRANKLIN COVERUP. AWT Publishers, 1992.
A former Republican state senator from Nebraska writes about a pedophile ring involved in the
kidnaping, sexual torture and murder of children that went all the way to the Bush White House.
Attorney DeCamp discusses the FBI role in the coverup of this case and the murder of a special
prosecutor appointed to investigate the pedophile ring.

Dempsey, James X. and David Cole. TERRORISM AND THE CONSTITUTION: SACRIFICING CIVIL
LIBERTIES IN THE NAME OF NATIONAL SECURITY. Los Angeles, CA: First Amendment
Foundation, 1999. Examines FBI campaign of terror to undermine civil liberties.

Diamond, Sigmund. COMPROMISED CAMPUS. Oxford University Press, 1992.
Professor Diamond attempts to get F.B.I. files showing collaboration between the F.B.I. and colleges
and universities from 1945-1955.

Donner, Frank. PROTECTORS OF PRIVILEGE. University of California Press, 1990.
Looks at collaboration between local police and the F.B.I. to stifle first amendment rights.

Dwyer, James. TWO SECONDS UNDER THE WORLD. Diane publishers 1997.
The most important book you will read on understanding FBI involvement in 9-11
terrorist act at the World Trade Center. This book lays out in detail how the FBI engineered
the first World Trade Center explosion.

Emerson, Steven and Brian Duffy. THE FALL OF PAN AM 103. G.B. Putnam's Sons, 1990.
Oliver Revell was the number 2 man at the F.B.I. until he was demoted by F.B.I. Director
William Sessions to the Dallas Field Office. His son Chris Revell had tickets for
Pan Am 103, but he changed his flight two days before the plane exploded over Lockerbie,
Scotland. See Ross Gelbspan's book, BREAK-INS, DEATH THREATS AND THE FBI to get a
fuller picture of Oliver Revell.

Foerstel, Herbert. SURVEILLANCE IN THE STACKS. Greenwood Press, 1991.
Looks at attempts by the F.B.I. to get librarians to spy on the American public.

Gallagher, Dorothy. ALL THE RIGHT ENEMIES. Penguin Books, 1988.
The F.B.I. utilized the Mafia to carry out its executions against political activists from 1930 through
1970. Carlos Tresca was one of their victims.

Gelbspan, Ross. BREAK- INS, DEATH THREATS, AND THE F.B.I. South End Press, 1991.
This Pulitzer Prize winning reporter formerly with the Boston Globe, details F.B.I. collaboration
with the death squads in El Salvador and their attacks upon American groups opposed to those death
squads.

Glick, Brian. WAR AT HOME. South End Press, 1989.
Attorney Glick details the F.B.I.’s covert war against political activists.

Hoffman, David. THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING AND THE POLITICS OF TERROR. Feral
House, 1998.
Contains detailed evidence about the FBI alliance with the terrorist underworld,
and how FBI agent provocateurs are behind many of the current bombings that have plagued the United States since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some current thinking has FBI agents creating these acts to fill the void caused by the downfall of communism.

Hougan, Jim. SPOOKS. William Morrow, 1978.
Important book detailing the life of former F.B.I. agent Robert Maheux and his relationship with the Mafia. Groundbreaking book in understanding FBI collaboration with the Mafia, using it to carry out assassinations on President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and others. See author Bud Schultz

Kaiser, Marty . Odyssey of an Eavesdropper( My Life in electronic countermeasures and my battle against the FBI) W Carroll & Graf 2005
Author exposes wiretapping crimes committed by FBI agents as well as Business Fraud. He built the wiretapping devices for FBI agents that were later used in crimes committed against people like Martin Luther King and public officials.After exposing FBI agents kickback schemes to Congress the author became a target of retaliation by tax payer funded FBI agents.

Kelly, John F. TAINTING EVIDENCE. The Free Press 1998. The book is based on testimony of FBI lab Whistleblower Dr. Frederick Whitehurst , an employee of the FBI for 17 years. Shows how bad the FBI Lab is run. Dr. Whitehurst was the chemist who analyzed Timothy McVeigh's clothes for traces of ammonium nitrate and was removed from the case when he did not find any bomb residue.

Lehr, Dick & O'Neill, Gerard. BLACK MASS. Public Affairs, 2000.
Looks at the FBI's collaboration in Boston with the Mafia and Irish Mob between 1960 and 2001 in which they collaborated in the murder of 21 women,children and men. Important book showing how the FBI uses the Mafia to commit political and other assassinations .

Melanson, Phillip. THE MURKIN CONSPIRACY. Praeger, 1989.
Professor Melanson looks at the F.B.I.’s role in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Melanson, Phillip. THE ROBERT KENNEDY ASSASSINATION. Shapolsky, 1991.
Professor Melanson is in charge of the Robert Kennedy archives at the University of Massachusetts.
He details the F.B.I.’s role as one of the principal architects of the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Messerschmidt, Jim. THE TRIAL OF LEONARD PELTIER. South End Press, 1983.
Looks at the miscarriage of justice in the F.B.I.’s handling of the Leonard Peltier case.

Oklahoma City Bombing Investigative Committee. THE FINAL REPORT.2001. The best book by far
providing overwhelming evidence of FBI involvement in the Oklahoma City Bombing .

Navasky, Victor. INVESTIGATING THE F.B.I. Doubleday, 1973.
Contains material presented at a major conference at Princeton University in 1971 investigating
crimes committed by the FBI.

Neff, James. MOBBED UP. Dell Publishers 1988.
Important book in understanding FBI collaboration with the Mafia especially how the Bureau
uses the Mafia to carry out its political assassinations.

Olsen, Jack. LAST MAN STANDING: THE TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH OF GERONIMO PRATT.
Doubleday, 2000.
Provides supporting evidence for the idea of the F.B.I. as a death squad. Examines the F.B.I. acts of genocide against Afro-Americans . Looks at how FBI agents framed Geronimo Pratt, a Afro American Viet-nam vet who spent over 25 years in prison before a judge released him saying he was innocent and framed by FBI agents.

Parenti, Michael. DIRTY TRUTHS. City Lights Books, 1996.
Dr. Parenti looks at F.B.I. involvement in the assassination of labor leader Walter Reuther while he was organizing protests against the Vietnam War. It includes the essay “Why the Left is Afraid to look at the Assassination of JFK”.

Pepper, William. ORDERS TO KILL. Carroll and Graf, 1995.
Attorney Pepper represented James Earl Ray in his bid for a new trial and won a landmark case in civil court in December 1999 for the Martin Luther King Jr. family. The jury in the case concluded hat the F.B.I. was involved in the assassination of King. His book details our government’s involvement and provides photographic evidence of the F.B.I.’s role in this assassination.

Pepper,William. ACT OF STATE: THE EXECUTION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING Verso Press, 2003
The evidence from the 1999 Civil Trial in Memphis brought by the King family in which the jury concluded FBI agents were principal architects in the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Powers, Richard Gid. SECRECY AND POWER. Free Press, 1987.
A biography of J. Edgar Hoover and his quest for power.

Powers, Tyrone. EYES TO MY SOUL. Majority Press, 1996.
Professor Powers an afro-american, talks about his 9 years working as an F.B.I. agent, and the
FBI FRUHMENSCHEN program. White agents tried to kill him when he was writing this book.

Robbins, Natalie. ALIEN INK. William Morrow, 1992.
Ms. Robbins acquired the F.B.I. files on the major writers and artists of the 20th century, and
examines F.B.I. attacks upon them and their freedom of expression.

Schultz, Bud and Ruth. THE PRICE OF DISSENT. University of California Press , 2001
The sequel to IT DID HAPPEN HERE with more interviews with civil rights activists and union
organizers and anti-war protestors who survived FBI assassination attempts and with family members of people who were murdered.

Seymour, Sheri. COMMITTEE OF THE STATES. Self-published, 1989.
The F.B.I. infiltrated the California Militia 10 years before the Oklahoma City bombing. The
book illustrates how easy it was for the F.B.I. to infiltrate the group and get it to make bombs.
Shows with child-like simplicity how easy it was for FBI agent provocteur to get Timothy McVeigh
to make bomb and drive the truck.

Sharkey, Joe. ABOVE SUSPICION. Simon & Schuster, 1993.
Looks at the F.B.I. coverup involving one of its own agents who murdered an informant after he got her pregnant.

Suarez, Manuel. REQUIEM ON CERRO MARAVILLA. Waterfront Press, 1987.
Looks at F.B.I. collaboration with local police in the arrest, handcuffing, and death squad execution of two teenagers in Puerto Rico.

Summers, Anthony. OFFICIAL AND CONFIDENTIAL. G.B. Putnam and Sons, 1993.
This is the book on which the PBS Frontline documentary on J. Edgar Hoover and his friendship
with the Mafia is based.

Theoharis, Athan. THE F.B.I. Garland Publishers, 1994.
Professor Theoharis has compiled a comprehensive listing of books and articles about the F.B.I. up to 1994.

Thomas, Kenn. THE OCTOPUS. Feral House, 1996.
Investigates the F.B.I.’s role in the killing of investigative reporter Danny Casolero while he was
investigating the October Surprise.

Turner, William. THE ASSASSINATION OF ROBERT KENNEDY. Thunder Mouth Press, 1993.
Written by a former F.B.I. agent, it looks at the F.B.I.’s involvement in the assassination of Robert
Kennedy.

Turner, William. REARVIEW MIRROR foreword by Oliver Stone. Penmarin Books CA 2001.
More updated information on FBI involvement in President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin
Luther King Assassination written by a former FBI agent.

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. WHO IS GUARDING THE GUARDIANS? A Report on Police
Death Squad activities. 1981.

Wiener, Jon. GIMME SOME TRUTH. University of California Press, 1999.
Professor Wiener looks at the 14 year battle with the F.B.I. to get them to release their files on
John Lennon.

Mel D Ayton -
5/26/2008

In 1995 Ray's London-based attorney, William Pepper, asserted that his client was innocent. The conspiracy to kill King, Pepper claimed, was organized by the U.S. government. Pepper alleged that government agents gave the contract to the head of organized crime in New Orleans who, in turn, solicited the assistance of a Mafia member in Memphis to handle the arrangements. The Memphis Mafia boss then hired Loyd Jowers, owner/operator of Jim's Grill beneath Ray's rooming house, to handle the payoff and dispose of the murder weapon. A U.S. Army sniper squad was in place to shoot King if the Mafia hit failed. Pepper alleged that the FBI, CIA, the media, Army Intelligence, and state and city officials helped cover up the assassination. In the late '90s Pepper claimed to have found Ray's handler, the mysterious Raoul (now re-named Raul by Pepper). Raul was allegedly a Portuguese immigrant living in New York State.

During the period when the Justice Department had been investigating these new allegations of conspiracy, the King family, represented by Pepper, sued Loyd Jowers in a wrongful-death lawsuit. They believed Jowers's 1993 televised admission that he had participated in a "conspiracy" to kill King gave King's family sufficient grounds to initiate a private law suit. During the 1999 four-week civil trial, which was held in a Shelby County Court House in Memphis, Pepper repeated the claims he had made in his 1995 book, Orders To Kill. Pepper had no interest in seeing Loyd Jowers go to jail. The whole thrust of Pepper's efforts was in trying to prove that Jowers was merely a tool in a larger conspiracy involving the FBI, the Military, the CIA, and the Mafia. Pepper's thesis centered on the reasons why the government wanted to eliminate the civil rights leader.

From the start, Pepper's courtroom allegations were viewed by many commentators as ludicrous, dependent as they were on the stories of many discredited witnesses who did not reveal their far-fetched tales until many years after the assassination. The jury, which consisted of six blacks and six whites, took three hours to reach its verdict of conspiracy involving Jowers. The King family received a token $100 award. The guilty verdict was hardly surprising, considering that Jowers's lawyer never disputed the contentions of the King lawyers. As the jury heard no evidence to rebut the conspiracy theory, it was inevitable it would return a verdict favorable to Pepper and the King family. The trial was, effectively, bogus.

The DOJ team of investigators (appointed by U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and which had no connection to the FBI) released its report in June 2000. The report rejected all of Pepper's conspiracy claims that had been made during the conspiracy trial, and provided evidentiary proof to support the team's conclusions.

Pepper never presented any credible evidence that would have supported his allegations, especially those of FBI involvement in the murder, or the allegation that the bureau never looked for a conspiracy in the first place. Contrary to the claims made by conspiracy advocates, it is clear that FBI senior officials kept an open mind during their assassination investigation. An FBI memo written by FBI Supervisor John S. Temple supports this conclusion. Temple wrote, "Supervisor Long also advised that Assistant Director DeLoach told Assistant Director Rosen that Los Angeles should keep in mind that King may have been killed by a hired assassin."

Another memo, written by J. Edgar Hoover, corroborates this finding. The memo states, "I said (to Atty. Gen. Ramsay Clark)...there will be efforts to kill (Ray) if there is a conspiracy and if there is no conspiracy, the supporters of Dr. King will do everything in their power to kill him...I said I think he acted entirely alone but we are not closing our minds that others might be associated with him and we have to run down every lead."

Historian Gerald McKnight believes there is no evidence to support the allegations the FBI was involved in King's killing and, furthermore, such ideas were far-fetched and illogical. McKnight wrote, "...there is nothing in the released documents to support, and persuasive evidence to reject, assertions that the FBI and Memphis Police Department conspired to assassinate King."

Additionally, if Hoover had planned to neutralize King by killing him he would have first destroyed the COINTELPRO records that contained evidence of the FBI's illegal surveillance of the civil rights leader. It is also rational to conclude that the bureau would never conspire with organizations or individuals outside the bureau for such a risky undertaking. After all, the FBI maintained its power by acting as a state within a state. Any knowledge of its activities by outsiders would have left the bureau extremely vulnerable. As FBI profiler John Douglas wrote, "...anyone who's worked in the government, even in the intelligence community, will tell you that NOTHING that big or well publicized stays secret for long. The big bureaucracy is fundamentally incapable of carrying out a conspiracy and keeping it under wraps."

Conveniently, much of the evidence Pepper presented at the 1999 conspiracy trial was curiously absent -- including the real rifle alleged to shoot King (at the bottom of the Mississippi River), the Memphis Police Department shooter (dead before his accusers went public), the Mafia organizer of the conspiracy (dead before his accusers "found" evidence of his role in the crime), photographs showing Ray did not shoot King (they have never surfaced), members of an Army sniper team (anonymous and "living in another country"), and their purported leader, whom Pepper mistakenly named.

Innocent events -- the so-called "second Mustang" (it was likely another white car of a different make, parked nearby or witnesses became confused when Ray left the rooming house then parked in a different spot when he returned), the damaged scope on the rifle found at the scene of the crime, policemen dropping from the wall opposite the Lorraine Motel, Rev. Kyles's poor choice of words to describe his actions shortly before King was killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel ("Only as I moved away so he could have a clear shot…"), the innocent statements made by the Portuguese immigrant's daughter that the "government" had helped her family -- all became part of Pepper's malevolent conspiracy jigsaw puzzle that distorted the truth about the assassination.

As visiting scholar at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, David Greenburg, wrote, "Despite multiple debunking these (conspiracy) fantasies endure…a crackpot named William F. Pepper has convinced King's entire family that the U.S. Government, including President Lyndon Johnson, was responsible for his death…Conspiracists adopt the trappings of scholarship, touting irrelevant titles and credentials. They burrow into the arcana of their topics and inundate potential acolytes with a barrage of pedantic detail. Rather than build a case from evidence, conspiracists deny the available evidence, maintaining that appearances deceive. Rather than admit to inconvenient facts, they dismiss them as lies, making their own theories irrefutable."

What became unfortunate about this case was the way in which Pepper stopped at nothing to malign innocent participants who had been caught up in his quest to prove a non-existent and far-fetched conspiracy organized by the U.S. government. He disgracefully pointed the finger of guilt at not only Rev. Kyles but also accused the widow of a Memphis Police Department "conspirator" of having lied about her husband's role in the conspiracy. Raul, an innocent Portuguese immigrant, had his life turned upside down by Pepper's desire to implicate him in a plot. Pepper displayed no shame in accusing each of his targets of criminal acts, perjury in the first instance and murder in the second. He also accused King assassination authors Gerold Frank and George McMillan of having sinister ties to the FBI and/or CIA, implying they conspired with the government to hide the truth or simply were duped when they investigated the King murder. He even gave credence to one of his star witnesses, Glenda Grabow, a JFK conspiracy fantasist who maligned the character of LBJ aide Jack Valenti by describing him as a pornographer. Instead of showing her the door, he enlisted her as a Jowers trial witness. As Pepper's former investigator, Ken Herman, told BBC documentary makers, "Pepper is the most gullible person I have ever met in my life".

Pepper's thesis is manifestly absurd. The idea that the U.S. government had King executed means that high officials of the Johnson administration were prepared to risk riot and arson in order to attain the elimination of a single individual. It is inconceivable that Johnson officials would have failed to see that the murder of a prominent African-American leader would have led to this inevitable outcome. Considering all that had happened in the previous four years, including the terrible destruction and rioting that occurred in major cities across the United States, his allegations become preposterous.

Mel D Ayton -
5/26/2008

In an email to the author dated 21st April 2008 Steve Barber wrote: "Van Praag's pulling 13 shots out of this recording is absurd, to say the least. I have studied this recording for 2 years. I received my copy of it in April 2006. I publicly presented my findings on the National Geographic Channel program, "CIA Secret Experiments", which aired March 10, 2008, and I pointed to a computer graph that shows 8 spikes, one for each gunshot. The gunshots are distinct, once you use Dolby C setting on a tape deck. I counted 8 distinct gunshots, fired rapidly, one after the other. I have the same, exact source of the recording that Van Praag uses, and, in fact, Van Praag and I corresponded in 2006, and he sent me a CD copy of what he calls his "master" which he said he was given permission to record “digitally” while at the California State Archives. The two sounds which Van Praag describes as coming too close together to be fired by one gunman are not two gunshots fired close together. The second of the two sounds I firmly believe to be the bullet striking a solid object. It does not have the characteristics of a 'pop' sound at all, and that is why it doesn't present a spike on the graph like the other gunshot sounds do. I am currently working directly with acoustics expert Phillip Harrison. Our findings differ drastically with what Van Praag claims to have found."

lois freeh -
5/26/2008

I won't get into a spitting contest with Ayton.
I believe Professor Phillip Melanson, Attorney William Pepper and a Civil Jury in Memphis can provide all the prima facie evidence needed to convict Lyndon Johnson, J Edgar Hoover and other members of local and Federal law enforcement in the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and President Kennedy.
In a 1999 Memphis civil trial brought by attorney Pepper on behalf of the King family, the jury returned a verdict on behalf of the King family
and said FBI agents were principal architects in the planning and cover-up of the King assassination.
read ACT OF STATE by William Pepper.
to view over 300 pages of crimes committed by FBI agents see
campusactivism.org
click on home in upper left
click on forum in the upper right
watch the documentary called THE GUILTY MEN pulled off the air at the History Channel and refuses to sell it.
google these words together to view the documentary on you tube
barr mcclellan guilty men you tube

Mel D Ayton -
5/25/2008

For interested HNN readers - The following is a detailed list as to number of shots heard by the vast majority of ear-witnesses in the pantry or vicinity who ventured a guess at the number of shots fired. The ear-witness accounts are in direct contradiction to the claims made by Philip Van Praag and Robert Joling that 13 shots were fired:

Ira Goldstein (one of the shooting victims) heard ‘6 or 7 shots’.

Irwin Stroll (another shooting victim) ‘thought there were 6 such (firecracker) noises’ before he was hit.

Harold Edward Hughes said there were, ‘…two series of shots, possibly three or four in each…’

Pete Hamill heard ‘5 shots…fired in rapid succession’

Ralph Elmore ‘4 sounds in rapid succession’.

Jesse Unruh heard ‘…two or four pops followed by four or five more…’

Estelyn LaHive heard ‘…two or three shots, then a slight pause, then several more shots.’

Joseph A. LaHive heard ‘six or seven shots’.

Richard Aubry heard ‘…one distinct blast, a pause, and then five or six other blasts in rapid succession…’

David Saul Barrett heard ‘…a loud pop, it sounded just like a breaking balloon, there was a short pause and then three more pops in rapid succession…’

Richard L. Cohen said, ‘I remember that a total of five shots were being fired.’

David M. Esquith heard ‘5 (popping) noises’

Jacqueline Sullivan heard ‘pop, pop, pop, pop’.

James Cummings ‘….heard three gunshots with about a second interval between each shot and then a series of shots…’

Rafer Johnson - ‘I don’t know how many shots, I couldn’t count them to tell you the truth, but I know it was like four or five.’

Gloria Farr ‘four rapid and distinct cracks’

Gabor Kadar ‘ 5 rapid explosions’

There is also a fair amount of consistency amongst a number of witnesses as to the grouping of the shots – first one, two or three shots then a pause followed by a rapid succession of shots. Kristi Witker said, “People were running in all directions. . . . there were two very distinct series of pop-pop-pop . . . pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. Three pops, then five -eight in all. . . . I saw the gunman standing, pointing the gun and firing.”

Bill Eppridge said that when he got to “…some doors that seemed small for the crowd” he heard two shots in very rapid succession – “Eppridge at first thought these were fireworks as they had been in Chinatown, San Francisco, the day before and there were many fireworks there. There was a pause after the second shot and people were scattering. Eppridge realized that what he thought were fireworks were actually shots. He ran forward instinctively thinking he had better count the shots. He counted a total of six shots.”

Angelo DiPierro said, "Shortly after Senator Kennedy entered the pantry, while we were still in the hallway, two shots rang out. A few seconds later several shots rang out as in rapid fire.”

Harold L Burba heard “…what sounded like three shots fairly close, followed by several more at random intervals. They sounded like they came from a cap pistol. I also saw what appeared to be flashes from the shots.’